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OPIC Achieves $1 Billion in Global Microfiance Support
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. Government’s development finance institution, today announced that the agency has surpassed $1 billion in financing support to global microfinance institutions, lenders and frameworks since 2010. OPIC provides financing to microfinance institutions through investments in microfinance vehicles, targeted credit facilities to individual microfinance institutions (MFIs), risk-sharing agreements, and guaranties supporting innovative industry efforts. OPIC’s financing has supported more than 100 microfinance institutions in more than 30 countries.
- Categories
- Investing
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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Tigo Tanzania Launches Innovative Nano Lending Scheme to Its Mobile Money Customers
Tigo Tanzania has today announced that it will launch an easy to access nano lending product to its stable of mobile financial services. This new product will not require collateral and offers immediate access to small loans to Tigo Pesa users.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Tech Entrepreneurs Boost Microfinance Startup Zidisha
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and a handful of other tech entrepreneurs and companies have donated a total of $525,000 to microfinance startup Zidisha, which hopes to bring down costs of peer-to-peer lending to cash-strapped young entrepreneurs in the developing world by getting rid of intermediaries.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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Small Farmers Meet Big Data: How the data revolution could transform smallholder finance
The enormous gap between the supply and demand of formal credit for smallholder farmers has been well documented. Among the varied causes of this mismatch is the extreme lack of information on potential borrowers that’s available to lenders. Two recent data-focused innovations, however, could dramatically reduce these information challenges and the associated lending risks, which could help open up pools of capital for previously underserved populations.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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From Planning to Execution: Using Value Chain Approach to Lending to Smallholder Farmers and Agribusiness
Lack of financial data about agribusinesses and smallholder farmers makes it even more difficult to adopt conventional methods of credit assessment. Most plain vanilla financial products are ill-suited to the cash flow requirements of an agribusiness, which is often cyclical in nature. But where most financial institutions see a challenge, we at Samunnati saw an opportunity in lending to smallholder farmers and agribusinesses.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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IFC Boosts Financial Access for SMEs in Colombia With New Loan to Banco Pichincha
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, strengthened its support to Colombia’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with a new US$80 million loan to Banco Pichincha, a bank that strives to sharply boost its lending to Colombian SMEs and low-income students.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Latin America
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Gross Loan Portfolio Increases 39.3% in Pakistan’s Microfinance Sector
The gross loan portfolio of the microfinance sector increased 39.3% year on year (YoY) to reach Rs93 billion at the end of 2015.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
- Tags
- lending, microfinance
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Viewpoint: Regulators Should Leave China’s P2P Sector Alone
I got into a shouting match with my 83-year-old father-in-law the other day in Shanghai. He had invested 300,000 yuan ($45,940) in Zhongda, an obscure peer-to-peer lending company based in Zhejiang Province. So far he has not suffered a loss from his adventure but he has refused to pull his money out despite my insistence that he do so.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- lending