European Investment Fund (EIF) - (EIB-Group)
Summary
Budget
Official information source
https://www.eif.org/Description
European Investment Fund (EIF) - (EIB-Group)
Who we are
We support Europe’s SMEs by improving their access to finance through a wide range of selected financial intermediaries. To this end, we design, promote and implement equity and debt financial instruments which specifically target SMEs. In this role, we foster EU objectives in support of entrepreneurship, growth, innovation, research and development, and employment.
What we do
Our central mission is to support Europe's small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) by helping them to access finance. To this end, we aim at satisfying existing and future market needs by designing innovative financial products addressed to our partners (banks, guarantee, leasing and microfinance institutions, private equity and venture capital funds, among others), acting as our financial intermediaries.
By offering an Integrated Risk Finance Product Range of SME finance to our intermediaries, we complement the products offered by the European Investment Bank (EIB) with which we form the EIB Group.
Equity productsWe invest in venture capital and growth funds, mezzanine funds that support SMEs. Our investment activities also cover technology transfer and business incubators. | Debt productsOur clients are a wide range of financial intermediaries, such as banks, mutual guarantee funds, leasing companies and special purpose vehicles providing funding to beneficiary SMEs. |
Inclusive financeWe provide funding (equity and loans), guarantees and technical assistance to a broad range of micro-credit providers, from non-bank financial institutions to well established banks to make microfinance a fully-fledged segment of the European financial sector. | |
While our equity instruments aim to improve the availability of risk capital for high-growth and innovative SMEs, we also target the debt requirements, as many SMEs seek finance through this more traditional route. Therefore we also provide guarantees and credit enhancement through securitisation to improve the lending capacity of our financial intermediaries and thus the availability and terms of debt for beneficiary SMEs. We carry out our activities in the European Union (EU) Member States, in EU Candidate and Potential Candidate Countries and in the European Free Trade Association Countries.
Information for...
- Our response to the Coronavirus outbreak
- Banks & Guarantee Institutions
- Venture Capital & Private Equity funds
- Loan funds
- Social Impact investors
- Inclusive finance providers
- Business Angels
- Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
- Journalists
- Job Seekers
- Institutional investors
