The CEB - Council of Europe Development Bank has launched a call for proposals for a new Blending Facility for Microfinance, aimed at advancing inclusive finance across Europe.

The purpose of the InvestEU Capacity Building Investment (CBI) product is to enhance the institutional capacity of financial intermediaries that have not yet reached sustainability, or that are in need of risk capital to sustain their growth and development.

This includes ‘greenfield financial intermediaries’ as well as all other intermediaries in the fields of microfinance, social entrepreneurship, or skills and education.

As an implementing partner of InvestEU, our portfolio guarantee products support investments for EU’s policy priorities over the period 2022-2027. The EIF, in its role of a guarantor, provides credit risk protection through portfolio (counter-) guarantees to selected financial intermediaries.

These are provided in the form of a capped or uncapped guarantee, and shall partly cover the credit risk of eligible debt financing transactions granted to predefined categories of final recipients and included for coverage in the portfolio(s).