2014 has seen more than just numbers growth for the SME Finance Forum (LinkedIn going from just 2000 to over 3600 members, page views up over 5000 unique visitors per month, etc…). It’s seen us begin the climb to a whole new level of activity and, most important, partnership for the SME Finance Forum. Before this year we’d done some meetings mostly within the World Bank Group, while providing some fairly limited input to other events. This year we took on new, major events, and scaled up some longstanding events, due in large part to our deepening relationships with key partners. First among this is CapitalPlus Exchange, with whom we’ve organized a CEOs Rountable on SME Finance in Istanbul last May, attended by some 120 people from around 60 financial institutions, and collaborated on several webinars now. This partnership of two teams totally committed to knowledge sharing in SME finance has even more potential, and you’ll be hearing more from us about where this is going even further during this year!The SME Finance Forum had a most fruitful collaboration with FMO, the Dutch development bank, to hold the largest ever IFI/DFI Working Group meeting on SME finance, with over 100 participants from most of the leading internationally active development finance bodies. Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, joined our discussions for some 3 hours, providing a new level of endorsement for our working-level structure. The Forum also began partnerships with the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC), the World Economic Forum and IBM – just to name a few important new relationships we are incubating. These add to our important ongoing relationships with the OECD, the Asian Development Bank, many parts of the Inter-American Development Bank, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion and Finovate, all of which involved joint work during the year. But perhaps most important, we reached agreement with our G20/Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion sponsors about our strategy for ensuring the long term sustainability of the SME Finance Forum. Transforming the Forum into what we hope to be a permanent legacy of the G20’s work involves its conversion into a global membership organization. Banks, non-bank financial institutions, development banks and fintech firms from around the world, of many shapes and sizes, are being invited to become SME Finance Forum “founder members” during 2015, with a VIP-level “relaunch” event planned to coincide with some of the G20 leadership meetings that will be held at year’s end in Turkey (one of the co-chairs of the SME finance working group of the G20, and this year’s President of the G20 itself). Through dues based on members’ total assets we hope to build a diverse, inclusive membership that will range from some of the biggest, longest established multinationals to the smallest, youngest innovators/”disruptors” – and in between. The transformation into a membership structure effectively will move the Forum from a donor-driven to an owner-driven structure, making it into a public-private partnership (since our members will have both public and private ownership), where member dues will support core operations indefinitely. These core operations will include all the public knowledge sharing services we now provide through our website, our LinkedIn group, and regular public events (such as the series of fintech talks we’ve begun which are available through webinar recordings on the SME Finance Forum website). We will be adding new members-only services such as benchmarking and detailed contacts brokering/peer exchange facilitation. This is in addition to the value members might obtain from sharing the podium at the G20 event, and from being able to advertise their support for the Forum’s public information work. We spent 2014 mapping out the new institution we’re trying to build, sounding out many prospective members and taking their reactions to heart. January saw us beginning the formal recruitment process, which we will report back on throughout the year through our website. We hope to build to an impressive relaunch event in Turkey, and we’ll be sharing with all of you the progress we make along the way….About the author: Matt Gamser, the Head of the SME Finance Forum, has over 30 years of experience in international enterprise development, local economic development, and finance. Prior to joining the SME Finance Forum, he led IFC’s advisory work in increasing access to financial services in the East Asia-Pacific region. Matt has worked for governments and private businesses around the world to create an improved policy and regulatory environment for private-sector growth and poverty reduction. He has edited and authored several books and numerous journal articles. Matt holds a BA and MA degrees from Harvard University, and a M.Sc and PhD from Sussex University (UK).
