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Francesca Mazzieri, MBA MIP
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The Netherlands have small dimension but very high population density. In 2007, 3 millions people – the 20% of the working population- were considering to start an economic activity, but only 3,3% of them were successful to do it.
The target group for microfinance is composed by 600.000 persons of which only 100.000 live on social welfare.
In 2007 a market study was done by McKinsey to understand the feasibility of a microfinance project; on February 2nd 2007 an advisory council was founded to implement microfinance in the Netherlands; the members were: Mr Laman Trip (former chairman of the board of ING Group in the Netherlands), HRH Princess Maxima, Mr L.M.M. Bolsius (alderman od Rotterdam), Mr N.Molenaar (professor of microfinance ah UAC INHolland and chairman of the European Network of Microfinance), Mr B.Staal (chairman of the Dutch Association of Banks) and Mrs J.Sylvester (member of senate).
The responsibilities of the council were:
- to make recommendations to the government on how to encourage, implement and govern microfinance in the Netherlands
- to stimulate, start and support growth of microfinance organisations
- to act as an ambassador
- to support the coordination between different government organisations
In 2009 a central credit institution has been created; it has 3 objectives:
- To stimulate the entrepreneurship
- To encourage the social cohesion
- To decrease the unemployment.
The government allocated €5 millions per year for projects of implementation of micro finance. The output of the research is that there is a potential market for microfinance and there is the necessity to involve the commercial banks in this process. The keyword must be: the distribution, the communication to understand that there is the product and to increase the local and the national awareness, the training and the coaching, and the combination with financing through a central credit institution. There are consultant and organization decentralized that uses a centralized credit structure using Internet.
The Dutch approach involves:
· Qredits, a Dutch foundation for Micro-loans. It's a central and efficiently organization for granting loans. The government distributes €15 million and the banks give €1,5 million. There is a central back office and 5 branches that support the local entrepreneurship.
· Local initiatives: each town can activate an own project of microfinance thanks to the subsidies of the regions.
At local level is important:
o To have active organization near to the entrepreneurs
o To insure that the entrepreneurs are capable to implement the business.
Today there are 22 active projects and 18 are in a developing phase.
· Coaching networks: there is also a team of operators of the ministry of economy that act as go-between the territory and the institutions. The project team of Microfinance is part of the Ministry of Economics Affairs in cooperating of Social Affairs and Employment; it developed:
· a web-site for entrepreneurs that want to find a coach
· a website to ask a microloan (for this service, the entrepreneurs must have a coach)
· a web-site for governmental officials to activate activities of micro finance.
Since January 2009 the results have been the following: 1200 requests and 185 granted loans, for a total amount of €3,8 million. The average amount of a loan is €20.500.
The organisation will continue to communicate with micro-entrepreneur using different instruments (e-mail newsletters, informational websites, seminars for microfinance). In each region the service is specific and different to the others. People are proud: there is great Energy; the sustainability can be reinforced if it's possible to use scale economy.
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