Together with Intesa Sanpaolo Banka BiH, EIB Global received today a prestigious Uxolo Award for an innovative credit line for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with long-term social impact. The awards ceremony took place during the Uxolo and TXF Global 2023 Development and Impact Finance Conference in Lisbon. The jury selected the winners among the applications submitted in 2022 from around the world, on the merit of innovation, impact and pioneering solutions in the emerging markets.

The impact incentive loan, first developed by the EIB in 2020, aims at fostering youth employment, gender equality and socially inclusive practices among small businesses and mid-caps. This innovative financing entails a combination of EIB funding with a reward mechanism for companies that meet specific targets towards enhancing leadership, employment and career development opportunities for women, young people and vulnerable social groups.

The Uxolo award is a way of recognising the crucial work of development finance stakeholders of all sizes across the globe. It recognises the importance of small transactions that can be more impactful when they are pathfinders for new markets or when they revolutionise the way traditional development projects have been financed. It rewards those who demonstrate innovation – in terms of financial engineering, risk mitigation and diversification of the traditional development funding pool – and propose practical solutions to real world development problems.

Uxolo’s 2022 Deals of the Year stretched from landmark conservation bonds and complex blended finance applications to inventive and impactful grants and guarantees.