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Banco BAC San José wins SME-Finance Innovation Award

Banco BAC San José wins SME-Finance Innovation Award

The Costa Rican Banco BAC San José received the SME-Finance Innovation Award, organised by DEG, at the FMO Exchange on the Future of Banking in Rotterdam. The financial service provider successfully competed with 34 applicants. Second winner was the "Medical Credit Fund", the Indian finance institution "IFMR Capital" came in third place. The SME Finance Innovation Award is specifically designed to honour financial institutions for innovative products, services and distribution channels in SME Finance.

Bruno Wenn, Chairman of DEG's Management Board, handed over the prizes to Eric Campos and Adolfo Haug Acuña (Banco BAC San José) as well as to Monique Dolfing-Vogelenzang (Medical Credit Fund) and Kshama Fernandes (IFMR Capital). In his speech, Bruno Wenn stressed the role that these prize-winning financial institutions were playing for entrepreneurship in developing and emerging-market countries. He continued that it was mainly due to their innovative financial products, services or distribution channels that small and medium-sized enterprises are able to unleash their potential, thereby contributing to economic growth and job creation.

Banco BAC San José stood out due to its approach to speed up the process of credit approval and to reduce the costs involved by using modern software and data processing. By means of a web-based customer management system the bank furthermore maintains contact with its customers and is able to quickly respond to their financial needs.

The second placed "Medical Credit Fund" offers private healthcare facilities in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria access to financial services and technical support. "IFMR Capital" was awarded a prize for the various financial products it developed which enable risk transfer from small finance institutions which offer loans to SMEs, to strong investors.

A five-member judging panel, made up of representatives of DEG, the Dutch development bank FMO, the French development finance institution Proparco, the advisory firm Enclude and Leipzig University, selected the finalists. They based their decision on the entries' level of innovation, their relevance to the market, the replicability of the idea to other regions and the sustainability of the financial products.