FPM, Fund for financial inclusion in DR Congo organized last December in Kinshasa, the signing ceremony of the partnership agreement with Equity Bank Congo SA.

Célestin Mukeba, Managing Director of Equity Bank Congo and Jean-Claude Thetika, Managing Director of FPM ASBL.

As part of its mission, which is part of the national strategy of microfinance to improve financial inclusion in the Democratic Republic of Congo, FPM contributes to poverty reduction in the DRC by promoting the development of an offer sustainable financial services accessible to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and low-income households.

It is within the framework of the direct technical assistance that FPM has been supporting Equity Bank Congo since March 2016 in the training of the staff and especially the capacity building of the agribusiness, facilitating the offer of the financial services in favor of the chains of agricultural values. With the support of FPM, Equity Bank Congo, which is a growing bank, is expanding its offer to the agricultural sector, a sector with very high potential and strategic development of the country. The agricultural sector is very often left to development projects and NGOs and receives little attention from the country’s banks and financial institutions, due to the nature of the risks and infrastructure challenges that the DRC presents. The support of FPM ASBL since 2016 has boosted the development of Equity Bank Congo’s activities in this important sector.

For this new partnership, the intervention of FPM is in line with the previous one, essentially aiming at optimizing the management of staff training, with the implementation of an e-learning platform and the development of large scale of the offer of financial services in favor of the agricultural sector. In addition, this new partnership also includes support for the expansion of digital financial services, in particular the bank’s agent network. The objective is to promote access to financial services, by improving Equity’s coverage and penetration in areas not covered by physical agencies and also by enhancing the impact and quality of services offered to its customers. The overall budget for this new intervention is around USD 400,000.

Equity Bank Congo SA is a subsidiary of the Equity Holdings Plc Group, which is a very dynamic group present in East Africa and the Center. The Group’s ambition is to set up in ten other African countries in the near future. The DRC is the sixth country and the first step in this ambitious program to count by 2025, 100 million customers. Currently, the Equity Group has more than 12 million customers with assets totaling more than 5.5 billion US dollars and an average return on investment of 30%.

The Equity Group is a leader in technological innovation and facilitation of financial and banking operations, has proven expertise in agribusiness and has transformed more than 600,000 subsistence farmers into Agro-Business men, in order to meet its mission of to be the champion of the socio-economic prosperity of Africans.

Equity Bank Congo is a solid financial institution, with rigorous management principles and a robust institutional architecture. It is a pioneer in innovations such as electronic banking and wants to maintain this leadership with initiatives on digital banking and agricultural financing. As a pioneer in agribusiness, the bank plans to increase this portfolio with the privileged target of the entire agricultural value chain.