A pair of deals from the World Bank’s private investment arm will channel $250 million in business and mortgage lending to women.
The IFC made a $50 million investment in a gender-lens bond issued by Thailand’s Muangthai Capital Public Company, or MTC, a non-banking financial institution that lends to women-owned enterprises.
MTC started more than 30 years ago with motorcycle financing and has expanded into enterprise lending, personal loans, and land-title loans. The publicly-listed company serves more than three million borrowers, most of whom work in the microbusiness, informal and agriculture sectors. It’s valued at about $2.5 billion.
MTC is among the first lenders in Thailand to issue a gender bond.
Feminist finance
One-third of senior business leadership positions in Thailand are held by women. But women working in the microenterprise and informal sectors lack access to formal financing. “And women face a disproportionate burden of care work,” observed Kyoko Kusakabe of the Asian Institute of Technology.
Valuing informal and care work in Asia was a central theme at the UN-hosted Feminist Finance Forum in Bangkok in May, which called for “channeling investment capital into transformative, gender-responsive solutions to climate change and economic disparities.”
Women’s home-ownership
The IFC also made a $200 million loan to Banco BICE to drive home mortgages for women in Chile. Some 57% of Banco BICE’s mortgages go to women, compared to a national industry average 41%.
“We hope that with this financing this percentage will increase even more,” the bank’s Alberto Schilling said in a statement.
The IFC’s loan has a three-year grace period on repayments to help Banco BICE ramp up its mortgage lending capacity.
In 2020, the IFC supportedGlobal Bank in Panama in launching a women-focused mortgage loan product.
