ACCION International is a private, nonprofit organization with the mission of giving people the financial tools they need to work their way out of poverty. By providing “micro”loans, financial services and business training to poor men and women who start their own businesses, ACCION helps people work their way up the economic ladder, with dignity and pride.
With access to financial tools, hardworking people around the world can expand their businesses, grow their incomes and improve the lives of family members, employees and neighbors in fundamental ways—better nutrition, regular schooling, or a roof that doesn’t leak.
APPROACH
ACCION is an innovator in financial access, pioneering many of the best practices and emerging standards in the industry. We provide a full range of management services, technical assistance and training, as well as investment and governance support to help financial institutions build institutional capacity and financial strength in order to serve low-income households on a broad scale. Over the past 40 years, ACCION has helped to build and strengthen some of the most successful microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the world.
Today, ACCION works with microfinance partner institutions in countries across the Americas, Africa and Asia. Our staff of full-time microfinance experts – one of the world’s largest – includes specialists based in the United States and in our regional offices in Bogota, Bangalore, Accra and Beijing, as well as advisors and managers living in-country and working side by side with local management. Our field-based teams are supported by a highly skilled research and development department, as well as by experts in financial markets.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Microfinance Products
ACCION seeks to make a full range of financial services accessible and affordable for low-income clients by expanding and enhancing the range of products and services that ACCION and its partner institutions deliver. ACCION's technical specialists and managers provide institutions with support on product development strategies to serve the base of the pyramid. The ACCION team draws on ACCION's deep experience serving a diverse group of institutions – including banks, microfinance institutions and retailers – all at various stages in their development and all facing unique challenges.
ACCION places particular emphasis on building capacity within its institutional partners to carry out product refinement and development on an ongoing basis. We have helped institutional clients to diagnosis markets and analyze organizational capacity to offer new products, design and develop product offerings, implement pilot testing of products tailored to specific markets, and develop marketing plans for product rollout. ACCION’s pioneering work in this field started in 1997, with the publication of various technical guides to product development and has continued over the last decade with direct support of financial institutions to expand and enhance their portfolio of product offerings. Products supported by ACCION include:
-Credit
-Housing
-Insurance
-Remittances
-Savings
Institutional Services
ACCION helps partners become more market-driven, improve competitive position and customer satisfaction by applying tools and building technical capacity around:
-Marketing Tools and Strategies
-Market Intelligence
-Delivery Channels
Education & Training
Since 1995, ACCION has been working on a key non-financial component of poverty alleviation: client education. ACCION has two major initiatives pertaining to client education.
-Financial literacy modules, to help low-income clients better manage their personal and household finances and become informed and effective consumers of financial services.
-Business training through our Dialogue on Business program – a set of award-winning modules that focus on building the skills of microentrepreneurs.
