BFC Senior Experts deliver agrilending workshop in Tbilisi, Georgia

More private lenders are seeing opportunities in financing the agricultural sector, but agrilending operations require new tools and approaches to cope with the market’s unique challenges. BFC Senior Experts Michael Kortenbusch, Ceyhan Atasoy, and Tatiana Babii have identified three key challenges for new entrants to agrilending, and on June 1st 2012 they delivered a workshop on navigating these challenges, hosted by the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE) Development Facility in Tbilisi, Georgia.

.

The technical workshop, “Agricultural Finance—How to make it work?” was part of the EFSE’s Sustainability and Stability EFSE Annual Meeting 2012, and was attended by senior personnel from banks, donor institutions, investors and international corporations. BFC’s Senior Experts covered the key aspects of setting up and running profitable and customer-oriented agricultural lending operations.

Michael Kortenbusch, Ceyhan Atasoy, and Tatiana Babii guided the audience through the core challenges of agrilending—market, risk and efficiency challenges—with case studies which illustrated effective ways to succeed. The workshop gave participants a solid understanding of the agrilending market and introduced participants to practical and tested methods for developing suitable services for individual client segments.