ProCredit group opens Academy Eastern Europe in Macedonia

Skopje, March 12 – Living up to its reputation as a groundbreaker in commercial microfinance, and with the aim of strengthening that reputation in the future, the ProCredit group opens its own regional training centre: ProCredit Academy Eastern Europe. The decision came in order to meet the growing demand for qualified management staff at the ProCredit banks. During the next five years, the number of employees in Eastern Europe will rise from more than 8,600 today to over 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. This week, a selected group of local middle management staff from the Eastern European banks belonging to the ProCredit group will start at the Academy. In its first year, the institution will welcome more than 100 course participants, and in the future its capacity will grow to over 400 per year. Initially, the training will take place in a rented building, but will move to a new location on the outskirts of Skopje once construction work on the new purpose-built facility has been completed. 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. “We are established the ProCredit Academy to meet the growing need for highly qualified and motivated managers. We are committed to significantly expanding our outreach to small businesses and lower income households across the region. Furthermore we are committed to bringing our customers responsible banking: this means enterprise loans and savings products, and not consumer loans,” explained Helen Alexander, Manager of ProCredit Academy and of ProCredit Holding, speaking today in Skopje. “For this we need good managers – managers who understand the needs of our customers, and who can build institutions with a strong sense of values and transparency. The establishment of this Academy will be absolutely central to our success across Eastern Europe.” 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 transition 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 of 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. 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 percent is made up of loans smaller than EUR 10,000. The ProCredit group is thus serving more than 740,000 small and micro entrepreneurs 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 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.