FINCA International (Foundation for International Community Assistance)

FINCA provides financial services to the world's lowest income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve living standards, creating a better future for their families.

Why do we exist?

The mission of FINCA is to provide financial services to the world’s lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living. Our vision is to be a global microfinance network collectively serving more low-income entrepreneurs than any other microfinance institution while operating on commercial principles of performance and sustainability.

Since 1985, FINCA (www.FINCA.org, has been committed to breaking the cycle of poverty in the world’s most desperate communities by providing small loans, savings programs, insurance protection and other financial services for the working poor. 

FINCA concluded 2009 with 717,217 microfinance clients in 21 countries across Africa, Eurasia, the Greater Middle East and Latin America and an outstanding loan portfolio of $322.3 million. In 2009, FINCA disbursed $682.2 million in loans.

In war torn Afghanistan, for example, FINCA is providing over 10,000 Afghan clients with working capital, helping them to start and build small businesses. When families are taken into account, these small businesses are helping to improve the lives of some 50,000 individuals, providing better nutrition, shelter, and clothing, and helping parents to afford education for their children. We believe that the work we’re doing is a source of peace and stability amid the ongoing conflict.

Around the world, FINCA targets the poorest of the working poor: those with the least access to services such as loans, savings programs, and insurance. Our clients include women, who make up 70 percent of the world's poor; individuals unable to find work in the formal sector; families displaced by conflict; the rural poor; and those affected by chronic poverty. The majority of FINCA’s clients are impoverished traders, selling goods such as produce, shoes, clothing, wood, charcoal, poultry and fish. Others cook and sell food, produce crafts, or run beauty salons or bicycle repair shops, while increasing numbers of our clients work in agriculture, raising livestock or growing crops.

What have you accomplished?

For the past 25 years, FINCA has provided millions of people – mostly women – with small loans, savings programs, insurance protection and other financial tools to help them build their small businesses, and create their own paths out of poverty. As the pioneer of the Village Banking methodology of microfinance, FINCA has become one of the world’s premier microfinance providers. Part of the reason Village Banking is so successful is that each donation given provides multiple loans over time. FINCA offers donors the opportunity to create exponential, long-term socio-economic benefits by contributing to an ever-expanding pool of loan capital at the service of lowest-income entrepreneurs.

FINCA’s loans rotate through 3-4 times each year, so every dollar that FINCA receives in donations translates to $3-$4 in loan capital.  Donations can be continually reinvested and redeployed so that one donation can continue benefiting clients over decades, while generating net interest income, which can be reinvested.

One example of a FINCA client whose life has been changed as a result of our financial services is FINCA Zambia client Angelina Sanyemba. In 2009, FINCA Zambia served 12,000 low-income entrepreneurs in one of the poorest countries in the world, with 86 percent of the population living below the national poverty line, and 50 percent of its citizens unemployed.

Angelina started a school in 1997 with five pupils. So talented was she that she was invited to become a partner in a larger school in 1998. School enrollment grew to 220 students but when the partnership dissolved, Angelina was left without enough income to improve the facilities or rent a larger space.

In 2001, Angelina heard about FINCA Zambia and joined a FINCA Zambia village bank. She used her first loan of $80 to purchase school supplies for the children. Subsequent loans have allowed Angelina to purchase furniture and open a shop nearby. The school and shop now employ eight other community residents. But Angelina says she has six more reasons to be glad she's a member of FINCA:  "I am able to provide free education in my school for six orphans."

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