Symbiotics is pleased to announce that Michel Guillet was elected to their Board of Directors at their annual general assembly in late April. Mr. Guillet has held several top management roles in the industrial and investments sectors and more recently in the area of private equity.

Read More

A second investor’s guide published by Symbiotics on emerging and frontier markets explores the “missing middle” beyond microfinance by reviewing the various forms of small enterprise financing intermediaries. This book was written as an introductory research guide to small enterprise impact investing, with the objective of defining this new investment theme and mapping its universe. It offers information for investors and other people who are interested in this space and helps to provide further transparency and understanding of this topic.

Read More

Symbiotics has upgraded its “SMX – Listed MFI” index with a new “SMX – Emerging Sustainable Finance” index”, a change motivated by fund managers and clients actively using it for some of their portfolios. The index has indeed outperformed both global and emerging market indexes, which has triggered this further interest.

Read More

Symbiotics is pleased to announce that the company has been granted a license as an asset manager of collective investment schemes by FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. The process of transformation into a regulated entity has allowed Symbiotics to benchmark itself against best practices in the asset management industry, in key areas such as governance, internal control, risk management and compliance and to strengthen the company’s processes and organization where required.

Read More

In the context of its Small Enterprise Impact Investing initiative with the City of London Corporation and Oxfam GB, Symbiotics has decided to put a special emphasis on Latin America. Its first step in this project has been to launch a survey among members of Forum Empresa, the CSR association for the region. InnovacionAL, a boutique consulting firm, has been mandated to conduct the study, in partnership with Codespa and IADB/MIF. In parallel to this, an introductory webinar took place March 27th, which included 70 participants.

Read More

The Philippines’ microfinance sector continues to be highly fragmented although if it is looked at it purely from the perspective of financial inclusion, we can see that a lot of progress has been made. On one hand, you can find the rural banks run by wealthy families and catering mostly to the salaried part of the population. On the other hand, you have a network of NGOs catering to the lower income population group. One can also find many small cooperatives scattered across the rural areas. In addition to these players, private lending companies and individual moneylenders also proliferate.

Read More

In January 2013, Symbiotics syndicated a loan offering for Fundación de la Mujer Bucaramanga, an MFI based in Northeastern Colombia. The transaction was made through four microfinance funds that Symbiotics has been advising and managing for several years. Symbiotics’ solid track record in both fund management and investment analysis and its nearly 10-year presence in Latin America have played an important role in the MFI’s choice to move ahead with this funding.

Read More

Since last summer, after strong efforts to reinforce its market outreach, Symbiotics experienced several very strong months of loan disbursement to its microfinance institution clientele. During the second semester, the company disbursed over USD 200 million with two months around USD 40m and a peak at USD 84 million in November. The loans were disbursed to MFIs in 22 countries and through 11 different investment vehicles/funds.

Read More

This year the microfinance local currency fund managed by Absolute Portfolio Management (APM) in Vienna has grown to USD 40 million and reached 8.8% of net yield in USD terms, making it the best performing microfinance fixed income fund in the industry. The portfolio has diversified its outreach through 18 currencies and 37 investments. The success of this strategy has been followed by many and now serves as a new benchmark for investors.

Read More