The Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund Closes, at $141M

quona_capitalThe Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund, sponsored and anchored by global nonprofit Accion and managed by fintech focused venture capital firm Quona Capital, closed with $141M in capital.

Institutional investors include global insurance companies, investment banks and asset managers, a university endowment, prominent foundations and family offices, as well as development finance institutions. The list of backers includes AXA Impact Fund; Blue Haven Initiative; Calvert Equity Portfolio; the Dalio Foundation; FMO (Nederlandse Financierings-Maatschappij voor Ontwikkelingslanden); Heifer Foundation; IDP Foundation, Inc.; IFC (International Finance Corporation), a member of the World Bank Group; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; The Lemelson Foundation; Mastercard; MetLife; PG Impact Investments; Private Market Impact Fund; Prudential Financial, Inc.; Quona Capital; The Sandy River Charitable Foundation; Skopos Impact Fund; TIAA Investments, an affiliate of Nuveen; Triodos Fair Share Fund and Triodos Microfinance Fund, funds managed by Triodos Investment Management; Wallace Global Fund; and William A. Gee.

The fund invests in companies that innovate to expand access to financial services to underserved consumers and businesses in emerging markets trying to solve the issue related to three billion people around the world who are no or under-served by the financial sector, with limited or no access to savings, credit, insurance, and payments.

Alternative credit, payments, small and medium enterprise (SME) finance, and insurtech are among the solutions to accelerate via the fund. Geographically, the vehicle will focus on emerging markets in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia (with a particular emphasis on India and Southeast Asia).

To-date, the Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund has invested in:
– Konfio, a data analytics and an online platform that delivers affordable working capital loans to micro-businesses in Mexico
– Creditas, a provider of secured home and auto equity loan solutions for the emerging middle class in Brazil
– Coins, a mobile payments platform leveraging the blockchain to provide a comprehensive suite of services for low income consumers in the Philippines
– NeoGrowth, which offers card and other electronic payments receivables financing to SMEs in India
– Yoco, a mobile point of sale and value added service solution for micro and small merchants in Africa
– Invoinet, a reverse factoring platform for small and medium enterprises in Argentina and Brazil
– Eseye, a global Internet of Things service provider enabling pay-as-you-go asset financing and access to prepaid utilities to underserved consumers in emerging markets
– IndiaMART, an Indian B2B listing and transactions platform for SMEs, and
– CreditMantri, a credit advisory platform in India.

FinSMEs

06/03/2017

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