Fifty years ago this year, ACCION was founded on the belief that we can create a better world by helping people to help themselves. Half a century later, we continue to fulfill this mission by providing high-quality, affordable financial services with dignity to those who need it most – those living in poverty.
Our vision is to build a financially inclusive world with access to economic opportunity for all. Over the last year, your support has enabled us to advance our mission and vision in many ways, including the provision of loans and other key financial services to millions.
Despite this progress, more than 2.7 billion people remain excluded from the world’s financial systems and the opportunity such access can create. With your support we can continue to bridge this gap, bringing life-changing microfinance services to the poor.
This year, ACCION made significant progress in all three of our strategic focus areas.
First, we are building the next generation of top-tier microfinance institutions – enabling these institutions to deliver a range of high-quality, affordable financial services. Highlights include:
- Inaugurating ACCION Microfinanças in Brazil, in June – a new MFI in the heart of the Amazon, where half of the region’s 14 million inhabitants live in poverty.
- Creating microfinance services for rural clients in Latin America through a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank. Over 130,000 clients in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador have already been reached with rural credit products. Micro-savings programs that help clients recover from natural disasters and other unexpected events have been rolled out in Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
- Building and strengthening EB-ACCION Microfinance, a new microfinance institution in Cameroon, where more than 65 percent of the actively employed population lacks access to any form of secure, financial services.
- Providing secure savings accounts for more than 250,000 low-income people served by our partners in Tanzania, Nigeria and Cameroon, and proudly recognizing the achievement of both ACCION Microfinance Bank (AMfB) in Nigeria as ‘Microfinance Bank of the Year,' and EB-ACCION Savings and Loans in Ghana as African Banker’s ‘Microfinance Institution/Project of the Year 2011.’
- Strengthening our pioneering microfinance work in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, China through partnership with the International Finance Corporation.
- Redoubling our commitment to the future of Indian microfinance, through equity investments and guarantees for our Mumbai- and Bihar-based partners, Swadhaar and Saija.
- Increasing opportunity here at home by working ever more closely with the ACCION U.S. Network – the largest microlending network in the country. Since inception, the Network has extended more than $300 million in small, working-capital loans.
- Continuing to explore un-served and underserved countries and regions of the world, such as Kenya, the Philippines, Pakistan and beyond, where our management, investment and governance skills can help foster financial inclusion.
Second, we are fueling innovation in financial inclusion, providing funding and technical assistance to promising start-ups and sustainable technologies beyond MFIs that serve people at the bottom of the pyramid:
- ACCION’s Frontier Investments Group continued to invest in ground-breaking financial services this year, such as mobile payments in Zambia, cashless payments in Peru, and a new technology services company in India staffed by people with disabilities.
- We are developing plans for the launch of a new venture capital fund that will provide patient capital to very small start-ups whose experimental but promising business models could catalyze the next leap in financial inclusion.
Third, we are proud to report that your support is helping us to build a strong microfinance industry with the highest possible standards:
- Through the Smart Campaign, ACCION’s Center for Financial Inclusion is helping to direct the industry’s first-ever, global consumer-protection initiative. With over 2,400 signatories serving more than 40 million clients in 130 countries, the Campaign is helping to ensure quality delivery of services, worldwide.
- We are helping to build industry capacity at training centers in India, Ghana and China, and in the last three years have taught more than 3,000 industry professionals new skills for delivering high-quality services.
- We continue to publish leading-edge, thought-provoking research on the industry, such as the recent reports on the state of client protection, and ‘opportunities and obstacles’ to financial inclusion.
- And we are expanding our collaboration with other industry leaders, including the ACCION Network of partners in Latin America and a working group of microfinance organization CEOs, on a common agenda to address key industry challenges. Our goal is to redouble the industry’s commitment to consumer protection, pricing transparency and meaningful measurement of social impact.
ACCION’s work has helped the microfinance industry to grow by orders of magnitude – from reaching tens of thousands of the world’s poor a few decades ago, to approximately 200 million today. Yet we know that much more remains to be done. That is why we are asking you for your continued support for our work around the globe.
As we look ahead to our next 50 years, we renew our pledge to build a truly financially inclusive world, where all of society can benefit from all that society offers. Thank you again for your participation. It has already made a difference; together, we can do so much more.
