Inclusive and innovative finance

By valu­ing the exper­tise of the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al finan­cial cen­tre and rely­ing on inte­grat­ed local devel­op­ment approach­es, the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion aims to erad­i­cate pover­ty and imple­ment the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals (SDGs) through inclu­sive and inno­v­a­tive finance. Tak­ing advan­tage of new finan­cial tools, inno­v­a­tive finance focus­es on the cre­ation of impact invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties focused on development.

With regard to its strate­gic part­ner­ships, the Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs has renewed its sup­port to sev­er­al partners.

A new agree­ment has been signed for a peri­od of two years with the Con­sul­ta­tive Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a World Bank think tank with the mis­sion of improv­ing the lives of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple by pro­mot­ing inno­v­a­tive solutions.

Dur­ing a vis­it to the House of Micro­fi­nance on 2 May 2022, Franz Fay­ot also signed a new three-year agree­ment with the Euro­pean Micro­fi­nance Plat­form (e‑MFP), the main net­work of Euro­pean organ­i­sa­tions and indi­vid­u­als active in the finan­cial inclu­sion sector.

Sup­port for the LuxFLAG labelling agency has also been renewed through a new two-year agreement.

The year 2022 also fea­tured the Euro­pean Micro­fi­nance Week, an annu­al fix­ture for experts in the sec­tor, whose flag­ship event is the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Euro­pean Micro­fi­nance Award. This took place at the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) on 18 Novem­ber, in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with e‑MFP and the Inclu­sive Finance Net­work Lux­em­bourg asbl (InFine​.lu). On 17 Novem­ber, at a cer­e­mo­ny chaired by H.R.H. the Grand Duchess, the award was pre­sent­ed to Ban­co Fie (Bolivia), in recog­ni­tion of the efforts made in the field of finan­cial inclu­sion for women.

The Direc­torate for Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion and Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs has also begun — through its imple­ment­ing agency LuxDev and the NGOADA — to for­mu­late new inclu­sive finance pro­grammes in its part­ner coun­tries and has con­clud­ed new strate­gic part­ner­ships in the regions of South-East Asia and cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Specif­i­cal­ly, a new region­al part­ner­ship has been signed with the Alliance for Finan­cial Inclu­sion (AFI), an inter­na­tion­al net­work of cen­tral banks and finan­cial reg­u­la­to­ry insti­tu­tions, which aims to imple­ment inno­v­a­tive strate­gies for finan­cial inclu­sion in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Coop­er­a­tion has also sought to con­sol­i­date its com­mit­ment to the fin­tech sec­tor to pro­mote inclu­sive finance by sign­ing a part­ner­ship with the Lux­em­bourg House of Finan­cial Tech­nol­o­gy (LHoFT), with the aim of expand­ing the scope of its CAT­A­PULT: Inclu­sion programme.