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Regional Experience and Expertise
Complementing its functional capabilities in the industry sectors of Microfinance, Small Business Finance and Housing Finance, SBI offers deep regional expertise drawing upon broad experience in developing and transitional markets and an extensive international network. SBI and its focused strategic practice cover five regions of the world economy: Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Former Soviet Union and Latin America.  Africa SBI has gained in the African region a broad knowledge of the regional banking, housing and microfinance sectors, through its work with local financial institutions on a variety of capacity building projects. These include strategic, organizational and technical guidance, development of business and marketing plans, and promotion of credit access for the housing and MSME sectors. Currently, SBI is working in Africa as part of the Global Financial Innovations Partnerships (GFIP), implemented in partnership with USAID, to forge strategic partnerships among government agencies, the donor community and the private financial sector to catalyze slum-upgrading activities in the housing sector. Asia SBI’s international practice began in 1983 when SBI senior management was invited by Mohammad Yunus to advise on the transformation of Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization in Asia, into a formal financial institution. Of special note, in the late 1990s, SBI established a non-bank finance company, SOA Kredit LLC, in Azerbaijan providing small business and housing loans in a country in which no capital market existed for such borrowers. With the USAID-funded Widening Harmonized Access to Microfinance (WHAM) project in Pakistan, SBI continues its legacy in Asia, to support broader financial services industry development and the availability of financial services for clients in the “missing middle” – those individuals who live slightly above the traditional poverty thresholds for microfinance, but remain below the income levels supported by the traditional commercial financial sector. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) SBI brings substantial professional experience in both "Old" and "New" Europe to help clients reap emerging growth opportunities in this expanding regional market. For example, SBI developed a mortgage finance initiative with USAID and the Romanian-American Enterprise fund. The SBI team assessed the market for mortgage loans, developed a range of products and recruited and trained local staff to form Domenia Credit. The initial loan portfolio was worth over $4 million. In 2003, SBI transferred management of the fund to local professionals, and facilitated the contribution of an additional $28 million in equity and debt investment, leaving the mortgage company as a market leader on a national scale. Former Soviet Union (FSU) More than a decade after the collapse of the USSR, the republics of the Former Soviet Union remain economically and politically challenging. Drawing on deep regional experience and in-depth knowledge of legal, regulatory, and economic conditions in the region, SBI stands ready to assist companies seeking to navigate the risky but potentially lucrative markets of the former Soviet Union. In the last decade, SBI has worked with 50 partner banks in the former Soviet Union to advance $300 million to more than 10,000 small business and real estate borrowers and train over 1,000 bank loan officers. Latin America SBI possesses a wide array of regional assets to support Latin American growth strategies of regionally headquartered companies. Since February 2005 SBI has provided technical assistance in a project jointly funded by Fundacion de la Cuenca (FdlC), a non-profit subsidiary of Argentine pension fund Unidos AFJP, and the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to launch a public trust fund that will make loans to SMEs in Santa Fe province, in central Argentina. The fund, of seven years duration, has investment commitments of USD 10 million, half of which are being contributed by the MIF, the rest by Unidos and another pension fund. The fund provides for two categories of participation—holders of trust debt obtain a fixed return of 6 percent per annum on their investment while holders of “participation certificates” receive dividends |
