EMN 2008-2009 Overview - Réseau Européen de la Microfinance

uK
Switzerland
Sweden
Spain
Romania
Portugal
Poland
Norway
Netherlands
Lithuania
Latvia
Italy
Ireland
Hungary
Germany
France
Finland
estonia
Croatia
Bulgaria
Belgium
The graph below shows the various
types of institutions per country. In Estonia,
Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Norway, Spain
and Switzerland, fifty percent or more of the
responding institutions are NGOs. In France,
the sector is divided equally between banks,
NGOs, non-bank financial institutions and
saving banks. In Spain, the second highest
number of microcredit providers is represented
by savings banks, which cover risk with
their “social work” funds. These funds are
managed mainly through foundations created
by the savings banks where the microcredit
programmes are located.
Graph 10: Number of microlenders by institutional type per country
0 5
10 15 20 25 30 35
Bank Credit union Government NGo NBFI Savings Bank CDFI other
Microlending as a proportion
of activity portfolio
In addition to classifying lenders by
mission statement, data shows that lenders
can be broken down into two further
groups: those which have microlending
as their primary occupation and those for
which microlending constitutes a relatively
small proportion of their activity portfolio.
All 170 institutions responded to this
question. Twenty-four percent of respondents
are involved only in microlending, compared
to 28% in 2006/07 and 16% in 2004/05
(EMN, 2008). It can be noted, however, that
during the last six years, the proportion of
microfinance institutions that are dedicated
exclusively to microfinance in Europe
has fluctuated very little and remains a
relatively small percentage. The remaining
76% of respondents are dedicated to other
complementary activities. For example, 17%
of institutional respondents are traditional
banks, whereas the rest of the institutions
are focused on other activities such as:
business development services (BDS) (35%),
entrepreneurship training (25%), business
incubator (15%) and financial education
programmes (13%). In the United Kingdom,
many institutions lend over 25,000 euros,
and this lending activity makes up a large
percentage of their overall portfolio.
Looking at the relative weight of
microlending in this diverse activity
portfolio, we can see that for almost half
(49%) of survey respondents in the EU,
microlending represents 25% or less of their
activity portfolio. This group is made up
25