At the kind invitation of colleagues from the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank (FOMIN, in Spanish), I attended this year's Foromic in Mexico. While not the largest forum ever held, my understanding is that over 1700 people attended. My role was to chair a panel on SME Finance, which contained three institutions from outside the region: (1) CARD SME Bank, a newly created thrift bank in the Philippines focusing on a higher segment than the core clientel of its older sibling, CARD Microfinance, (2) TEB Bank, the 6th largest bank in Turkey, an aggressive player in the SME segment, and a particularly expansive innovator in accompanying non-financial services, and (3) Business Partners, an African non-bank financial institution, focused on growing small firms with "risk capital", going beyond simple debt. One surprise was how many people attended our session...but the bigger surprise was how many and how diverse the financial institutions were that attended Foromic as a whole. There were a surprising number of commercial banks, regulated non-bank finance companies, and even financial technology firms. In addition to our session, there were others on Women entrepreneurs finance (again, going upmarket from microenterprise), agrifinance, and crowdfinancing. for more see the link below. Thanks again, Tetsuro and Francisco, for bringing me along. much learning was had!matt
Topics
Type
Our Poblications
0
Promote to Editors
0