Fully supportive of the venture, the non-profit-making Dexia Foundation Belgium is doing what it can to help Crédal and Hefboom, Belgium’s two biggest microcredit players.
Understanding microcredit
Microcredit consists in lending small amounts of cash at preferential terms to persons denied access to traditional bank loans. It’s an approach that has been well-publicised in recent years thanks to the efforts of Muhammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Initially, microcredit was used just to finance company start-up projects. These days, it is also used to enable the acquisition of basic consumption goods or the execution of work aimed at securing energy savings.
Crédal and Hefboom: an ethical, collaborative approach
In Belgium, the two main players supplying microcredits are Crédal and Hefboom. Never granting credit without knowledge of the consequences for the applicants in question, these providers are known for their ethical, collaborative approach. Ethical approach? For Crédal and Hefboom, micro-finance should be considered a means of development and of combating poverty, and even overindebtedness. Collaborative approach? Hefboom and Crédal, who grant loans only to persons denied access to bank credit, apply lower-than-market rates and offer a personalised follow-up.
Dexia, microcredit partner
Dexia Foundation Belgium shares the same vision of microcredit as Crédal and Hefsboom. The Foundation therefore seeks to help them grow their activity. To this end, the non-profit-making Dexia Foundation, responsible for all Dexia’s social philanthropic activities in Belgium, helps finance the two bodies. It also grants them access to volunteers, recruited from current staff at the bank and from retired staff. These volunteers place their skills at the service of the micro-entrepreneurs, in particular by being at their side as they build up their business.
Results for 2010
After a crisis-ridden 2009 and the insecurity to which part of the population was prey, an increasing number of microcredit applications were sent to Crédal and Hefboom in 2010: out of the more than 3,600 applications, 524 microcredits were granted. A hundred or so of these were professional microcredits, entailing the creation or development of the same number of VSEs in Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels.