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, and grow assets. 
• Subdebt is normally just a carve-out of mainstream debt funds; TJ’s dedicated  subdebt fund is a unique proposition. 

Jarri can be reached via Triple Jump’s website (https://triplejump.eu/) or on LinkedIn.

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 report "Fintech: Financial Inclusion or Exclusion?", referred to during the episode:

https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/WP/2022/English/wpiea2022080-print-pdf.ashx

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 development, operational efficiency, turnaround management, and strategy & business development. 

In the last 7 years, Michael has provided expertise in 8 long-term projects in MSME finance & agrifinance in Armenia (KfW), Azerbaijan (EBRD), Georgia (SDC), Kyrgyzstan (KfW), Nepal (KfW) and Serbia (KfW), being involved in improvement of credit technologies, procedures, strategies and tools for MSME & agrilending, capacity building to FIs for sustainable extension of loans, and improving access to finance (specifically for agribusinesses, MSMEs, farmers, rural enterprises, etc.).

Michael holds a Master Degree in Slavic Languages. He is native in German and fluent in English and Russian. 

In this episode Michael discusses the drivers of and outlook for Agricultural Value Chain Finance. 

Michael can be reached on LinkedIn or on via BFC's website (https://bfconsulting.com/) 

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies. 

FDDA also works with financial inclusive institutions to improve their corporate governance and reporting, besides helping asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer. 

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected]. 

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 brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies.

FDDA also works with financial inclusive institutions to improve their corporate governance and reporting, besides helping asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer.

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected].

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 microfinance pioneer, Mr Shafiqul Haque Chowdhury, who died in February 2021. ASA NGO was the driving force behind the establishment of ASA International.

The "ASA model" has been described by some as the "Henry Ford Motor model of microfinance", which is to say that it runs an extremely low-cost and highly efficient credit delivery model with a simple, but very effective credit assessment process. ASA International adopted the "ASA Model" as developed by ASA the NGO, and greenfielded 13 microfinance institutions across 13 countries in Asia and Africa. The majority of these institutions are regulated as "microfinance banks" or "microfinance institutions" in their home markets.

From ASA International we are delighted to welcome Martijn Bollen, General counsel of ASA International, a position he has held since 2007, and Karin Kersten, Executive director of the Board and Director of Corporate Development, who joined in October 2021.

Martijn and Karin can be reached on LinkedIn or via the website at https://www.asa-international.com/. 

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies. 

FDDA also works with financial inclusive institutions to improve their corporate governance and reporting, besides helping asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer. 

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected]. 

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 [email protected]. 

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies. 

FDDA also works with financial inclusive institutions to improve their corporate governance and reporting, besides helping asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer. 

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected]. 

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 funding partners.

Herjola can be contacted via LinkedIn or via NOA’s website (https://noafin.al/eng/).

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell and Zinaida Vasilenko, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies.

FDDA also helps impactful asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer.

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell or Zinaida Vasilenko on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected].

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 & forward contracts – that enable TCX’s investors and clients to provide their borrowers with financing in their own currency, while shifting the currency risk to TCX. They are therefore protected from any currency volatility.

In this episode, Jonas describes clearly and simply how hedging for MFIs works, what TCX does, and discusses market conditions. Further descriptions of cross currency hedges can be found in TCX’s last annual report (https://www.tcxfund.com/reports/).

Jonas can be contacted via LinkedIn or at TCX’s website (https://www.tcxfund.com/).

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell and Zinaida Vasilenko, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies.

FDDA also helps impactful asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer.

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell or Zinaida Vasilenko on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected].

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 unfolding of Lebanon's economic crisis, and deep challenges of managing a MFI through volatility and challenging economic, political and social conditions. 

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell and Zinaida Vasilenko, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies. 

FDDA also helps impactful asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer. 

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell or Zinaida Vasilenko on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected]. 

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, Fullerton Financial Holdings, first as a Project Manager based out of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, responsible for the start-up phase of a greenfield MSME banking co-investment between Fullerton and Canadia Bank which led to the creation of Cambodia Post Bank, and then later as the Country Rep based out of Yangon, Myanmar, responsible for the set-up and launch of Fullerton Myanmar.  Here, he became interested in and familiar with the challenges faced by agri-businesses and small-scale farmers who lacked access to capital and markets, which led him towards Maha.

Born and educated in Italy (Economics from Bocconi University in Milan), Matteo had academic exchange programs at the University of Niigata in Japan, at New York University, at the London School of Economics, and at the University of California in Berkeley. He also has an executive management diploma from INSEAD and speaks fluent English, Spanish and some French.

In this episode Matteo describes in graphic and sometimes harrowing detail the genesis of the coup d'état in Myanmar, the true complexities of the socio-political situation and what it was like to manage an MFI under extreme crisis conditions. 

This podcast is brought to you by Financial Due Diligence Associates, a multilingual consulting partnership founded by Guy Rodwell and Zinaida Vasilenko, specialised in holistic, relevant and concise analysis of financially inclusive companies. 

FDDA also helps impactful asset managers access French institutions through an alliance with Oxondo, a leading Paris-based third party marketer. 

You can reach FDDA by contacting Guy Rodwell or Zinaida Vasilenko on LinkedIn, or by emailing us at [email protected].