As of July 2022, the current EaSI Technical Assistance Programme officially transitions to Social Inclusive Finance Technical Assistance (SIFTA) managed by the EIB and funded by the European Union under the InvestEU Advisory Hub with a contribution from the EIB.
MFR was contracted as the main evaluator for the SIFTA program under the InvestEU Fund to perform: European Code of Good Conduct evaluations, Institutional Assessments, ESG Assessments, Institutional Ratings and finally Impact Assessments.
Learn more about the SIFTA Program
To benefit from the SIFTA Program, you can apply by sending an e-mail to the EIB sifta@eib.org using the title “SIFTA – Request for Services – Name of your institution + country”.
Evaluation of the implementation of the Code
Evaluation of the implementation of the Code: certify that a given MF institution complies with the Code. The Code certification, awarded by the Steering Group, is valid for 4 years. For this reason, renewals of previous certifications are offered.
Institutional Assessments
Institutional Assessments consist of a detailed analysis of an institution’s internal policies and procedures and comparison with internationally recognised best practices in MF and/or SE. Institutional Assessments might be conducted to confirm that the MF’s request corresponds to its actual training/TA needs.
MFR’s Institutional Assessment is also specifically designed to appraise the institution against the Code required practices and provide the necessary guidelines to the MF provider for a proper implementation and preparation for the evaluation of the Code.
The focus is less on financial performance and risk management, and more on organisational and operational aspects. The specific aim is to assess the level of development of the institution and identify the main internal weaknesses and external threats jointly with the existing opportunities for the institution. The output of this analysis serves as an operational tool, which is intended to help the executive management and the governance bodies of the institution in order to strengthen its operational capacity and improve its policies and procedures.
This service particularly targets MF and SE providers that wish to identify or check their capacity building needs through a third-party evaluation. The conclusions of each assessment exercise will be summarised in an Assessment Report that will be delivered to the beneficiary as well as to the EIB and to the TA service provider (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management gGmbH Consortium).
ESG Assessments
ESG Assessments provide an opinion on the capacity of a Financial Institution (FI) to put its mission into practice and achieve its social and environmental goals. The assessment focuses on the FI’s social and environmental management systems, governance, client protection policies and procedures, outreach results and the quality of its services. The ESG Assessment allows the SIFTA beneficiary institutions to receive a professional analysis regarding their environmental and social performance areas to be improved and aligned to the international best practices. This would result in an accurate identification of the capacity building needs and eventually in increasing their accountability to their social mission and visibility to the investors with social orientation.
Institutional Ratings
Institutional Ratings provide an opinion on the long-term viability of a MF or SE finance provider through an evaluation based on the internal processes, the risk management and the performance of the provider. The Institutional rating contains different areas of analysis such as external context, ownership, governance, management, systems and controls, financial performance and loan portfolio quality.
Like the Institutional Assessment, the Institutional Rating is a third-party evaluation of the SIFTA beneficiary institution aiming at providing a detailed analysis of the main areas of the organization and a rating grade for each of them as well as a final synthetic rating grade, internationally recognized by the main industry stakeholders (investors, donors, development financial institutions, policy-makers and regulators). Moreover, the Institutional Rating is a complete mapping of training/TA needs as well as a perfect preparation for the Code.
Impact Assessments
Impact Assessments focus on measuring the impact that MF or SE finance providers have on the ends-clients. Impact Assessment is an external, reliable and independent validation of the changes generated by the SIFTA beneficiary institutions’ activities, in its life. Key impact indicators based on the Universal Outcome Indicators defined by the Social Performance Task Force (SPTF) and aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The measurement of impact indicators is based on the data available in the SIFTA beneficiary institution’s database and an ad-hoc survey to clients, ensuring the use of complete and reliable information through a longitudinal analysis methodology (observation of the same clients at several points in time) and interview techniques to improve the ability to collect information.