Skopje, March 6, 2007 - Living up to its reputation as a groundbreaker in commercial microfinance, and with the aim of strengthening that reputation in the future, ProCredit group opens its own regional training centre: ProCredit Academy Eastern Europe.
The ProCredit group has decided to found this Academy in Skopje in order to meet the growing demand for qualified management staff at the ProCredit banks. During the next five years, the number of ProCredit employees in Eastern Europe will rise from 8,600 today to 16,000.
The regional ProCredit Academy has been established in the republic of Macedonia by all ProCredit banks in Eastern Europe: Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. It has been designed to provide training to middle management staff working in all Eastern European countries in which ProCredit banks operate.
Five groups of participants will start this year, and each group will include at least one representative from each Eastern European ProCredit bank, thus ensuring a multinational learning environment. They will come together in Skopje three times a year, with each visit lasting two weeks. The curriculum is divided into four key areas: The ProCredit philosophy, general knowledge, management skills and personal development skills.
The wide range of topics covered in the training program is designed to weld the individual participants into a team, who will benefit both from the subject matter of the courses and from the diversity of the group.
On a global level more than 12,500 employees are working for the ProCredit group, which consists of 19 development – oriented ”neighborhood banks” supplying loans to small businesses and providing other financial services to lower income groups not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Africa and Latin America, where Regional ProCredit Academies have also been set up. As of the end of December 2006 these banks had a total loan portfolio of EUR 2 billion outstanding to more than 740,000 micro and small entrepreneurs in developing countries and transaction economies. Total customer deposits across the group came to EUR 1.8 billion. The ProCredit group has been remarkably successful in attracting savings deposits from lower –income households: 80 percent of the deposit accounts contain balances to less than EUR 100. These small savings accounts are a further reflection of the fact that the ProCredit Banks –which are modeled on Germany’s “Sparkassen”, or savings and loan associations – have a strong orientation towards the kind of “responsible banking “which promotes economic development.
Further information:
ProCredit Holding AG
ProCredit holding AG (BBB-according to Fitch Ratings) is a corporation with equity totaling roughly EUR 220 million, in which both private and public sector investors hold shares. The holding company owns (majority) stakes in 19 development-oriented “neighborhood banks” in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America. In December 2006 these banks had customer deposits totaling EUR 1.8 billion and outstanding loans totaling EUR 2.1 billion. Of this total, 95 % is made up of loans smaller than EUR 10,000.The ProCredit groups thus serving more than 740,000 small and micro enterprises in developing countries and transition economies. The company was founded in 1998 (under its former name, IMI) with the aim of enabling small and micro enterprises in developing countries and transition economies to gain access to financial services. ProCredit’s objective is to build up and manage economically sustainable financial institutions that explicitly serve these target groups, which are often a neglected sector of their respective economies.
