In a press release, recently formed company Access Holding AG, announced that prominent microfinance investors, KfW, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Omidyar-Tufts Microfinance fund have each 19.2% of the company’s equity. The founding company LFS Financial Systems GmBH together with its employee investment company, MicroAssets, hold the remaining 23.2% equity.
The press release informs, “Access Holding’s strategic objective is to build up a network of commercial microfinance banks, with common principles and under a common management.” The IFC investment summary says, “Over time, AccessHolding aims to transform into a controlling parent company of a global network of microfinance banks with a common brand identity”.
This proclaimed strategy seems to be very similar to what ProCredit Holding has been executing to considerable attention from the capital markets. Procredit Holding AG, has, over the past decade or so, with the aid of funding from multilateral institutions, scaled up into a network of nineteen microbanks with a USD 2.3 billion loan portfolio spread across 670,000 loans of which 95 percent are USD 12,500 or smaller. ProCredit microbanks are spread across Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Recently, ProCredit was in the news as TIAA-CREF, one of the largest pension funds in the United States purchased USD 43 million of preference equity in the company.
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