Let's Talk Microfinance

Jarri Jung is Director, Financial Institutions at Triple Jump. In this episode, he discusses the outlook for the microfinance sector and talks about the opportunities and challenges of lending subordinated debt.Key insights:The health crisis has passed but higher interest rates and the inflation environment have replaced Covid as the main concern facing the industry.Although subdebt is not equity, #MFIs using it acts as a catalyst to growth because they can leverage up and take on more debt, ...

Steven Duchatelle is the CEO of Advans Group, where he has worked for nearly 22 years.In this episode, Steven outlines the risks and opportunities for the microfinance sector in coming quarters, before focusing on Advans’ experience of digital transformation, how it drives efficiency and customer outreach, along with potential obstacles to such transformation and the impact on Advans’ social mission.Steven can be reached via LinkedIn or at Advans' website: (https://www.advansgroup.com/)IMF re...

Michael Kortenbusch is a Senior MSME Lending Expert, Team Leader, and the Managing Director of Business & Finance Consulting (BFC).With 30 years of overall professional experience, of which 24 years in banking and development finance, and 16 years in agriculture lending, he has led, supervised and provided expertise in over 55 projects implemented by BFC, primarily focused on MSME finance and access to finance, agrilending, rural & value chain finance, due diligence, institutional dev...

Following up from the previous, fascinating episode with Martijn Bollen and Karin Kersten from ASA International, we interview Sazzad Hossein, CEO of ASA Kenya one of the group’s most important subsidiaries, in which he gives a brilliant view of how ASA takes advantage of digital financial services, in the form of M-PESA, while adhering to its core social mission and values.Sazzad can be reached on LinkedIn or via ASA Kenya’s website (https://kenya.asa-international.com/).This podcast is brou...

This week we welcome ASA International. It is one of the world’s largest international microfinance institutions providing small, socially responsible loans, averaging about $166, to 2.4m low-income entrepreneurs, most of whom are women, across 13 countries in Asia and Africa. Listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker “ASAI” it has a market capitalization of about $108m."ASA" stands for the "Association for Social Advancement". ASA NGO was founded in 1978 in Bangladesh by a microfi...

Erik Geurts, the accomplished financial inclusion consultant, discusses the impact on emerging markets of the strong US dollar, high inflation and tighter interest rates, along with the knock impact on MFIs. He adds in some sensible prescriptions for MFIs, lenders and regulators alike. Based in Lima/Peru, Erik is Deputy Chair of the board of Banco D-MIRO in Ecuador and a financial inclusion consultant for several MIVs and DFIs. Erik can be reached on LinkedIn or at egeurts.consulti...

Herjola Spahiu started her career at Emporiki Bank, Albania, which was acquired by Crédit Agricole Albania, and where she ended up as Head of Retail Banking. She then became CEO of NOA, Albania’s second largest non bank financial institution. She also served as chair of the Albanian Microfinance Association and is a member of the board of directors of the European Microfinance Network.In this episode, Herjola gives valuable advice on best practice for MFIs managing relationships with their fu...

Jonas Enrico Luini started his career at Credit Access Grameen, and after roles at various other institutions, for the last five and a half years he has been a vice president at The Currency Exchange Fund (‘TCX’), founded in 2007 by a group of development finance institutions (DFIs), specialised microfinance investment vehicles (MIVs) and donors.TCX offers solutions to manage currency risk in developing and frontier markets. These solutions consist of financial instruments – swaps & forwa...

Youssef Fawaz is CEO of the Lebanese Association for Development – Al Majmoua, of which he was a founding Board Member in 1996. He is also one of the founding members of Sanabel, the Microfinance Network of Arab Countries, and served twice as Chairman of the Board in 2008 and in 2015. He is a Member of the Steering Committee of the MicroFinance Network, and a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Engineering at the American University of Beirut.In this episode, Youssef describes the onset and unf...

Currently based in Ibiza, Spain, Matteo Marinelli is the former CEO and Board member of Maha Agriculture Microfinance, an agri-focused-fintech-oriented-MFI based in Yangon, Myanmar, owned by Myanma Awba Group, and the International Finance Corporation. He began his career with Grameen Bank, in Dhaka, Bangladesh and after short term consulting assignments in Tanzania, Afghanistan, Serbia and Thailand, moved to Blue Orchard in Geneva. He then joined a wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings...