Articles
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...
Digital Transformation
Nov 24, 2021
Our CEO, Matthew Gamser, was interviewed by ICMA Pakistan and shared his opinions on financial challenges faced by small businesses. “Going from cash to digital payment and from paper to digital business contracts and transactions, is the key factor in improving MSME access to finance”, Matthew emphasized. As for key financial challenges faced by...
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...
Financial Inclusion
Gender Finance
May 13, 2021
Maritza Cabezas Ludena, the Investment Strategist at Triodos Investment Management , published this article after participating in our recent Open Webinar - Gender Lens Investing in Financial Intermediaries . The pandemic has unexpectedly accelerated certain trends in financial inclusion. Government interventions to reduce mobile costs and the...
Gender Finance
Apr 20, 2021
One of the most commonly used phrases in the job market is, “there is nothing much more fulfilling than running your own enterprise or business”. Some indeed say this to gratify a desire for leisure and pleasure attributable to being entrepreneur, while others also say this to illustrate their quest to satisfy a life-long passion for latent...
Gender Finance
Apr 14, 2021
After attending our open webinar ‘ Gender Lens Investing in Financial Intermediaries ’, author Hamish Monk wrote this article that was first published on Finextra 's website here . What is gender lens investing? How do we advance gender diversity and inclusion in the fintech and renewable energy sectors? Can we accurately measure the impact of...
Covid-19
Digital Transformation
Apr 13, 2021
Although the banking industry has long been tech-heavy, its technology has not always served it well and this presents a particular challenge when trying to serve the important SME market. Banking tech has not been able to keep up with the pace of change in other industries, and the monolithic systems and in-house servers on which they are built...
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...