Our events
AgriFinance Community of Practice (CoP) - Leveraging Digital Technologies in AgriFinance
The SME Finance Forum is convening a group of agrifinance experts and practitioners from member and non-member institutions in order to discuss and document recent innovations in agrifinance. This will lead to creating a community of practice on agrifinance with an objective of promoting learning and sharing of good practice examples that help members improve their services to agri-SMEs. The deep-dive workshop sessionS will cover different aspects. Read about the first meeting of this CoP here.
Leveraging digital technologies in AgriFinance
There is a growing trend that digitalization is playing an important role in facilitating access to finance in agriculture. Digital technologies come to address some important shortcomings in agriculture, including lack of financial information and formal financial records, lack of data to assess agriculture risks, and lack of history of transactions, etc. This second meeting of the CoP in Agriculture Finance offers a unique opportunity to the CoP members to come together and share experiences on digital financial solutions to promote access to finance in agriculture. The next meeting of the Community of Practice will be held on Tuesday, April 27th at 8 a.m. EST, and the main theme will be the potential of digital technology to generate data on farmers and Agri SMEs.
Download Agenda here>
About the presenters
Laura Blair is the Chief Strategy Officer at Farmforce. Laura Blair has lead innovations in emerging market agriculture for over a decade, joining Farmforce in 2017 from a career designing and implementing climate change resilience and agricultural insurance solutions throughout Africa and Asia. At Farmforce she oversees relationships with multi-country clients and partner organizations to continue positioning Farmforce on the forefront of smallholder-focused agtech. Prior to Farmforce, she advised on new country and product expansion with value chain assessments to develop country and region-specific agricultural insurance strategies. This includes developing working relationships with governments, investors, clients, agribusinesses, and other stakeholders. She has managed local teams to develop crop and livestock insurance products directly based on end client needs related to agriculture, finance, insurance and mobile. Laura has a BSc, Magna Cum Laude, from Cornell University in Applied Economics – Agribusiness Management with studies in Plant Biology, graduating with a Distinction in Research. Her focus was in plant molecular biology research, with an emphasis on food security crops, with experiences in US universities and in Taiwan. Other research includes technology relationships between multinational agribusinesses and research organizations throughout Africa. She has an MBA in Strategy and Innovation from the University of Oxford, and is based in Northern Ireland. 
Hans Dellien is the Agrifinance Specialist for EAP at IFC, his role is to coordinate advisory services for banks in the region, in the design and implementation of financial services to farmers and Agribusinesses in rural areas. Dellien has supported banks and Fintech companies in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Before joining IFC, Dellien was the Director of Microfinance Products and Services at Women’s World Banking, responsible to coordinate technical services to micro finance institutions in Africa, Asia, Middle East and Latin America. Dellien also supported commercial banks interested in expanding financial services into rural areas. In China he led a team that supported HSBC with the introduction of agricultural loans in 5 provinces in Central China. Prior joining WWB, Dellien worked 5 years for the International Project Consultants (IPC-Gmbh) a German consulting firm associated to PRO-CREDIT Holding. Dellien has a master degree in Agricultural Economics and Rural Finance from the Ohio State University.
