“Microfinance has never been needed so much to alleviate financial exclusion,” said Paul Kalinauckas, Board Member of the Microfinance Centre (MFC) upon closing the 23rd MFC Annual Conference, which took place from 14 to 16 September 2021 on the theme “Social Finance Vibe: Pandemic Reboot”.
“The growth of technology whilst maintaining customer relations will see many more changes to benefit our customers,” he added. But “digitalisation can be a bridge or a moat (…) and has to be coupled with financial literacy,” said Tim Ogden, managing director of the Financial Access Initiative at NYU when opening MFC’s first-ever fully virtual networking event.
Some 300 social finance professionals attended the event and listened to 100 speakers over three days, including EIB Group staff and clients, during several dedicated mini-events on topics such as EU funding in the new budgeting cycle, technical assistance for microfinance companies and adapting to the new normal and the role of social/impact entrepreneurship in society.
The Microfinance Centre is a social finance network that promotes fairness, inclusion, equality and responsible service. It unites 113 organisations (including 77 microfinance institutions) across 36 countries in Europe, Central Asia and beyond that together deliver responsible microfinance services to almost 2 million low-income clients.
The EIB Institute complements the activities of the European Investment Bank Group (the EIB and EIF) in the area of microfinance. Since 2015, the EIB Institute has sponsored the annual European Microfinance Network Conference, the annual Microfinance Centre Conference and the European Microfinance Day (EMD). In this year’s Annual Conference, selected social entrepreneurs and alumni from the Institute’s Social Innovation Tournament (SIT) contributed as speakers.
