Equity acquires Ksh.10bn loan to extend financing to SMEs

Equity Bank Kenya has acquired a Ksh.10 billion syndicated loan from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to extend its loan book to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and climate friendly investments in the country.

Further to increasing Equity’s capital base, the IFC is expected to extend global knowledge on SME and climate financing to the lender to improve on the bank’s environmental and social risk management systems.

Equity Bank Group Chief Executive Officer James Mwangi expects the bank’s extended partnership with the IFC to strengthen capacity to further financial inclusion and sustainable investing.

“Equity Bank aims to disrupt the market by offering innovative financial products and services, and by pushing ourselves to ensure access to financial services are more readily available in Kenya,” he said

The bank has since its establishment as a micro-lender focused on broadening inclusion to pilot Kenya’s first agency banking platform. The lender has since trained up to 2 million micro-entrepreneurs on financial literacy and business development.

Equity Bank is an existing client of the IFC and has previous benefited on the corporation’s credit facility to support its SME banking portfolio.

The IFC is a sister organization to the World Bank and has since its establishment in 1956 focused on the private sector in emerging markets facilitating long-term financing capacity with the aim of bridging the gap to poverty eradication.

The institution has seen an increase to its global-climate related portfolio to grow its potential financing capacity to Ksh.2.9 trillion annually by 2020. The world-bank private-sector investing arm sunk a total of Ksh.2.3 trillion in long-term financing to developing countries.

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World Bank Group Equity Bank Kenya IFC SME financing

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