This week I had the pleasure of supporting a student writing a thesis about Impact Investments. The first question made me stumble already: Does your firm accept a trade-off between impact and financial return? While it is a common question in our industry,

As the big bubble of cryptocurrencies is rapidly deflating in from of our eyes, I can’t stop wondering about the level of naivete and recklessness that is uncovered. My friends and colleagues know the doubts I raised when discussing the alleged omnipotent benefits that the crypto industry could bring to our world. It was even supposed to solve the problems of poverty, whereas by now, it erased the lifetime savings and pensions of many.

A major challenge in the risk assessment of SME borrowers is the largely unstructured and of qualitative nature of information. Financial Institutions find it difficult to approach the assessment this information which often includes only rudimentary and un-audited financial statements. Mass market retail loans are easier to evaluate because of the larger share of quantifiable information which can serve as a better input for a quantitative scoring module.

It is now over 20 years that I have dedicated at least parts of my work efforts to a space currently known as Impact Investing. My first projects included supporting the design of a summer academy for Microfinance and supporting a cooperative bank in Bolivia with product costing.

Providing loans to Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) is among the most challenging business segments for financial institutions and investment funds.

This is the third article in a series of blog posts in which we introduce the concepts of knowledge-based lending for SME business. In this article, we look at the opportunities and challenges provided through rating and scoring methodologies.

This is the fourth article in a series of blog posts in which we introduce the concepts of knowledge-based lending for SME business. In this article, we take a fresh look at the overall lending process in a financial institution focusing on SME loans. In each of the steps

This is the fifth article in a series of blog posts in which we introduce the concepts of knowledge-based lending for SME business. In this article, we introduce the monitoring process and the early Warning System.