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We examine whether low access to financial intermediaries works as an obstacle acquiring financial capital for Swedish firms by using information from the Community Innovation Survey indicating whether firms perceive the acquisition of external capital to be difficult. This perception is explained by the distance to the firms’ nearest financial intermediaries and their total local supply. The results indicate that the distance to banks is related to a larger problem of obtaining external financial capital in rural areas.

The purpose of this note is to provide policy recommendations to improve access to credit of rural populations and small agricultural producers under financially sustainable schemes. Although the agricultural sector remains an important source of employment, agricultural credit is a small fraction of commercial credit in Colombia. The share of agricultural credit in Colombia is below levels observed in other countries in the region. Colombian commercial banks have limited credit volume in rural areas, concentrating their lending activities on more profitable urban populations. General deposit warehouses and the agricultural commodity exchange (Bolsa Mercantil de Colombia (BMC)) provide funding for agricultural activities, but they are underdeveloped compared to regional peers and serve medium and large size producers. Overall use of mobile- and internet-based payment financial products remains low in rural Colombia. According to 2014 Findex survey data, just two percent of adults report using mobile banking, defined as a mobile platform for making transactions from an account at a financial institution. Public credit guarantee system (FAG) coverage should be modified to incentive the use of mobile guarantees and agricultural insurance. This will ensure that financial institutions have only covered tail risks, providing incentives to use mobile guarantees.

The 2015 Sustainability Review provides insights into activities undertaken to manage environmental, social, and economic impacts in the World Bank’s internal business operations. The content and data in this document relate to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), together the World Bank.

[EN] This paper aims at evaluating loan performance of bank offices. For this purpose, a multicriteria decision support model given uncertainty is developed, in which the criteria to evaluate loan performance are the different discount rates which can be potentially used to compute the net present value (NPV) of each loan outflow and repayment inflow. This proposal is motivated by the fact that the true discount rate (opportunity cost of capital) is uncertain. The bank offices are classified in non-dominated and dominated by other bank offices in terms of loan performance from the multiple NPV criteria. As a further result, a complete ranking of the bank offices from their performance indexes is obtained. This ranking relies on a principle of moderate pessimism to solve uncertainty tables. Although the proposed method is applicable to various types of loans, the special class of personal loans is emphasised in the paper. As an actual case, a set of bank offices are evaluated from their loans and repayments during the period 2001-2010. Numerical data are tabulated together with the computing process and the results., This work has been financially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, project number ECO2011-28927.

The corporate scorecard is designed to provide a snapshot of the Bank's overall performance, including its business modernization, in the context of development results. It facilitates strategic dialogue between management and the Board on progress made and areas that need attention. With the results measurement system, which was adopted for the 13th replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA13) in 2002, the Bank became the first multilateral development institution to use a framework with quantitative indicators to monitor results and performance. The corporate scorecard expands this approach to the entire World Bank covering both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and IDA. The corporate scorecard uses an integrated results and performance framework, which is organized in a four-tier structure that groups indicators along the results chain. Tier one is development context. Tier two is development results supported by the Bank. Whether the Bank is managing its operations and services effectively is shown in tier three. Tier four focuses on whether the Bank is managing skills, capacity, resources, and processes efficiently; and is business modernization on track?

This technical note on access to finance addresses six questions: 1) what is the access to and use of financial services in the Philippines, how does it vary, and how does it compare to other countries? 2) What financial services are available to different market segments? 3) How do different categories of financial institutions contribute to outreach, and what is their potential to expand outreach? 4) How does the regulatory environment support access to finance? 5) What financial infrastructure is available to make credit decisions? 6) What are the results of government policies or programs to promote access to financial services? The note concludes with recommendations to improve access to finance. An estimated 30 percent of Filipinos use formal financial services. This is lower than the East Asia region average. Access to finance has improved since the 2002 Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). The provision of financial services to low-income individuals has expanded. The Philippines has received international recognition for its favorable regulatory policies to promote pioneering use of mobile payments technology and its microfinance regulatory framework.