Access To Finance

Access to Finance is fundamental to all business development. SMEs throughout both the developed and developing world face challenges in securing the finance necessary to develop and grow their businesses. These challenges are more intense in the developing world and have multiple origins, including:

• limited product offerings from lenders within their countries;
• poorly conceived / communicated financing requests from borrowers;
• country specific finance sector structural inefficiencies such as poor creditworthiness recording or inadequate or unreliable asset/loan security registration;
• inefficiencies in lenders’ loan application processes;
• limited access to or understanding of access to finance ancillaries such as business protection insurance, performance bonds and guarantees.

PEP-Pacific’s Access to Finance Program focuses on addressing these impediments to SMEs securing finance by targeting these issues with a “tailored solutions approach” that takes into account local market idiosyncrasies to deliver sustainable solutions for both lenders and borrowers.

The objective of the Access to Finance Program is to strengthen and stimulate the provision of loans and other financial services to SMEs so that the SME community can grow, helping to create more and better jobs, raise living standards and alleviate poverty.

PEP-Pacific’s Access to Finance Program provides a range of advisory assistance aimed at:

• strengthening the performance of key lending institutions and helping to raise overall standards in the financial industry;
• increasing competition;
• improving efficiencies to lower costs and increase the geographic spread of services, and
• promoting sustainable financial services.

The program focuses on bank capacity building, microcredit, training, product development and good governance.

The PEP-Pacific Access to Finance Program is a regional program with specific elements tailored for each of PEP-Pacific’s member countries reflecting the unique needs of each market.