Articles
Credit Risk & Scoring
Feb 08, 2023
Our member, Asante Financial Services Group, is driven by passion to see to the growth of the MSME sector in Africa. It is through strategic partnerships such as the one with SOLV Kenya, a member company of Standard Chartered Banking Group, that we are able to extend our reach to the Kenyan MSMEs In Sub-Saharan Africa, micro, small and medium...
Alternative Financing
Digital Financial Services
Dec 15, 2022
Digital lending or alternative lending is a catalyst to inclusive financial services for segments that are not a key target for traditional financial institutions. The use of AI-powered decisioning systems for evaluating individual credit eligibility by digital lending platforms has now become critical for micro, small and medium enterprises (...
Trade Finance
Sep 14, 2022
This podcast prepared by our industry partner Trade Finance Global, features Matt Gamser, CEO of the SME Finance Forum and Magda Bianco, co-chair of the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI). It gives an overview of current G20 initiatives designed to help SMEs get easier access to finance. Among those initiatives is the Global SME...
Sustainable Finance
Dec 01, 2021
Conference Proceedings of the 2021 Global SME Finance Forum Day 1 - October 18th Opening Remarks Makhtar Diop, Managing Director and EVP, International Finance Corporation (IFC) We need contribution from SMEs to help us reach our sustainability goals. Individually not a major source of greenhouse gases but collectively account for a significant...
Guarantees
Covid-19
May 27, 2021
Posted originally in the Financial Resilience Around the World, World Bank Blog Series Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in the heart of the Sahel region, was already facing difficult challenges when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. The security context had been deteriorating since June 2018, with an upsurge in violent attacks by terrorists and...
Digital Transformation
Mar 15, 2021
*This article is an excerpt with key highlights from WeBank’s recent presentation at the 2021 Knowledge Annual Conference of the IFC. The pandemic has shoved the global economy into a state of chaos, affecting both large corporations and SMEs across nearly all sectors. However, the global outbreak has also brought opportunities to innovate...
Covid-19
Digital Financial Services
Mar 04, 2021
The past 12 months have brought a multitude of unprecedented challenges for small businesses. It was inspirational to witness how they responded with versatility, creativity and tenacity, and how that brought about rapid innovation, new collaboration and empathy that continues to benefit society as a whole. It was also exciting to see the...
Non Financial Services
Gender Finance
Covid-19
Jan 15, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted many lives across the globe. In this blog we focus on women. Worldwide, the pandemic has hit women harder than men. Women run a higher risk of COVID-19 contagion due to their occupations in health-related activities. They are also overrepresented in jobs where social distancing has been more difficult...
Fintech
Dec 23, 2020
Our member Raiffesisen Bank International’s Partnership Program Elevator Lab’s fourth round took place virtually in the second half of 2020. Elevator Lab had been selected as one of the “Best Financial Innovation Labs in 2020” by the Global Finance. The Lab aims at finding innovative fintech solutions and building mutually beneficial partnerships...
Financial Inclusion
Dec 22, 2020
Our member Kabbage plans to expand on the work done by researchers from NYU Stern on the kind of lenders that had the highest minority share among their Payment Protection Program (PPP) loans. They will work on exploring the reasons behind the found correlation between the lender type and borrower race. The current research note focused on...