Annual General Meeting Roundtable

The Montreal Group held on April 4th its virtual Annual General Meeting. One of the main highlights of the session was a roundtable, where each
member shared their top priorities for 2024 and their expectations towards TMG.

Below is a recap on members’ top priorities:

Finnvera (Finland)

  1. Exploring ways of becoming more influential
  2. Exploring ways in which can use their direct export finance more effectively , including ways to support the Ukraine to rebuild their economy again

BDC (Canada)

  1. Reach more underserved and diverse entrepreneurs.
    • Build the Community Banking strategy and offering.
    • Prepare to launch two new envelopes for Indigenous entrepreneurs and Black entrepreneurs.
    • Better equip their Business Development Leads to serve diverse entrepreneurs.
  2. Help Canadian entrepreneurs become more sustainable :
    • a) Helping SMEs lower their environmental impact.
    • b) Help SMEs supply the national efforts on energy transition.

Read more here.

Wallonie Entreprendre (Belgium)

  1. Focus on leveraging ESG and AI data.
  2. Boosting the entrepreneurship program in universities to stimulate the entrepreneurial spirit of students.

NAFIN (Mexico)

  1. Help SMEs penetrate American markets, invest in capacity building for SMEs to be prepared to be part of global
    value chains.
  2. Providing financial products, guarantees and credits for a specific purpose.
  3. Create products that contribute to SME decarbonization.
  4. Create sustainability linked bonds and continue developing Nafin’s ESG Strategy.

BBB (United Kingdom)

  1. Drive sustainable growth by ensuring smaller businesses can access the right type of financing they need to start,
    survive, and grow.
  2. Backing innovation by ensuring innovative business can access the right capital to start and scale.
  3. Unlocking entrepreneurs’ potential by ensuring they can access the financing they need regardless of where and
    who they are.
  4. Building the modern, green economy by financing groundbreaking solutions to climate change and helping smaller businesses transition to net zero so they thrive in a green future.

Read more here.

DBN (Nigeria)

  1. Integrate more compelling propositions to Participating Financial Institutions (PFIs).
  2. Look at bundling their products such as guarantees, and technical assistance.
  3. Work on product innovation within their lending operations.
  4. Partner with PFIs to lend to more women.
  5. Work on innovative ventures and partnering with Fintechs.

SIDF (Saudi Arabia)

  1. Enhance risk management models, such as client scoring, expected rate of defaults.
  2. Conducting extensive research on AI technology to be able to leverage it for processing data on clients.

Tamwilcom (Morocco)

  1. Ensure success of new product offer targeting innovative startups through grants loans.
  2. New offer targeting women entrepreneurship an initiative brought by Moroccans living abroad.
  3. Developing technical assistance for green finance.
  4. Explore partnerships with micro finance institutions.

BNDES (Brazil)

  1. Increasing the role of BNDES as a green, inclusive, and technological bank.
  2. Continue their role as key actor in the Amazon Region and re re start of the Amazon fund.
  3. Continue promoting a green a just transition.

SIDBI (India)

  1. Take forward green finance programs and scale them up. These programs consist of:
    • Financing
    • Capacity building programs
    • Enabling financing in the ecosystem
  2. Adoption of digital capabilities:
    • To be able to r each out to nano enterprises, who are underserved in terms of non financial and financial
      services.
    • Upcoming collaborations with fintech companies who develop tools that analyze alternate data points.

Bpifrance (France)

  1. Industrialize France : 35 B Euros to be distributed over the next 5 years.
  2. Green Finance : 35 B Euros to be dispersed over the next 5 years.
  3. Exploring Investing in Deeptech : Future impact on climate and industrialization