- The signing of the agreement is part of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation’s commitment to support the sector’s development and to overcome the hurdles facing microfinance entities.
- The current shortage of such professionals limits the possibility of attending the poorer members of the population.
- The first of these initiatives will be the launch of a Microfinance Management Programme in Peru.
The Chairman of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation, Manuel Méndez del Río, and Juan Antonio Gimeno, the Vice-Chancellor of the Spanish National Distance Learning University (Spanish initials, UNED), today signed a framework agreement for collaboration that will enable initiatives to be put under way to train credit officers specialising in microfinance.
The agreement aims to support the growth and expansion of the microfinance sector, which, due to the current shortage of credit officers, still leaves over 300 million low-income earners in Latin America and 4,000 million around the world, unattended. These people are severely disadvantaged with no access to the financial system and they see their opportunities for development and improving their standard of living held back.
Under the agreement, the BBVA Microfinance Foundation will supply the knowledge and the economies of scale and scope through its Microfinance Network, and the UNED will provide specialised lecturers and tutors who will deliver the training courses over its virtual international education platform, in collaboration with local universities in Latin America.
According to Manuel Méndez del Río, “due to the scarcity of credit officers, microfinance entities have seen their capacity constrained and they are unable to reach the poorer sectors of the population, largely in rural areas, far away from entity branches, whereby these remain unattended. This situation partly explains why growth of the microfinance industry, which stands at 10% per annum according to the data from the Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, is insufficient; incapable of reaching the broad layers of the population suffering financial exclusion.”
For his part, Vice-Chancellor Juan A. Gimeno underlined that the UNED is an example of an integrating university and defended it was coherent that this university be involved in activities fostering social and sustainable development in Ibero-American countries.
He also stated that the UNED has developed an international structure focused on Latin America where it has set up branches in several countries, including Peru, and it heads the Ibero-American Association of Remote Higher Education (Spanish initials, AIESAD).
Microfinance management Programme in Peru
Under this framework agreement, the first activity to be put under way will be the launch of a Microfinance Management Programme in Peru in early March, in collaboration with the local Universidad del Pacífico (Pacific University).
The programme will be delivered either on-line or in-house and it will have a duration of 150 training hours. Students will obtain a dual qualification from both universities. Moreover, those attaining the best academic grades will be offered a work placement and future employment as a credit manager in Caja Nuestra Gente, the BBVA Microfinance Foundation’s entity in Peru.
The Microfinance Management Programme will initially be offered in Peru, but it will also spread to other countries in Latin America where the BBVA Microfinance Foundation is present.