A COMMITMENT TO FINANCIAL INCLUSION
The BBVA Microfinance Foundation is a not-for-profit institution set up for the purpose of ensuring that more and more individuals in a situation of poverty have access to financial services and use them to find new opportunities for development. Opportunities such as undertaking productive activities that enable them to improve both their own and their family's standard of living. More specifically, the BBVA Microfinance Foundation is committed to fighting against financial exclusion.
Millions of impoverished individuals have no access to any kind of financial services. The lack of income and collateral amongst those with fewest resources hampers and normally prevents them becoming traditional bank clients. This further restricts their opportunities to overcome poverty and set up activities that help them to obtain new and better income.
Microfinances are financial services adapted to the needs and circumstances of less privileged people, successfully helping them to overcome the obstacles they have encountered with traditional banking. Microfinances represent the most efficient tool against financial exclusion, as they have shown themselves to be a viable business alternative to extend financial services amongst disadvantaged segments of society.
However, banks that provide these products are unable to meet the vast unsatisfied needs of this segment of society. In order to contribute to the strengthening of the microfinance sector, the BBVA Microfinance Foundation acquires and invests in the active control of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries, so that these can better and more efficiently help segments of society that are still financially excluded.