Our purpose
The sustainable development of people
under vulnerable conditions who own
productive activities.
Our model
“Productive Finance”: financial services, training and advice for people who live in vulnerable conditions, so they could progress through the net income derived from their productive activities.
History
In May 2007, BBVA set up the non-profit organisation BBVA Microfinance Foundation (BBVAMF), created within its corporate social responsibility framework, for the purpose of promoting sustainable and inclusive economic and social development for people under vulnerable conditions by using Productive Finance, the Foundation’s own specialty and methodology. To this end, it donated €200 million to the Foundation, while making available all the professional experience of an institution that has been in banking for nearly 160 years.
BBVA Microfinance Foundation is entirely independent from the BBVA Group; it has its own legal personality and is governed and managed separately, investing its endowment in creating and consolidating a group of microfinance institutions in Latin America, the profits from which revert to the Foundation’s own operations, with no financial return for BBVA.
In more than 16 years of activity, BBVAMF has observed that providing adequate financial products and services overtime to excluded and low-income entrepreneurs is key to generate development, as it also mitigates poverty and its consequences. During this period, institutions of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation have originated more than USD 19 billion to more than six million low-income entrepreneurs, creating opportunities so they could improve their lives. This is how the Foundation has turned into one of the highest impact philanthropic initiatives, and the top provider of individual loans in the most unequal region of the planet.