Spotlight on Impact: Financial Inclusion

Financial Inclusion: Capital That Unlocks Potential

When people and small businesses can access fair, affordable finance, potential turns into progress. From market vendors to family-owned factories, access to credit, savings, and payments brings livelihoods into the formal economy - creating jobs, stabilizing incomes, and strengthening communities. 

Why Financial Inclusion Matters - Now

Across many emerging markets, promising enterprises still struggle to secure working capital and growth finance. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 16.9% of small-scale manufacturing firms received a loan or line of credit - about half the global average (31%) (source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report, 2024, United Nations). That funding gap constrains job creation and limits local resilience. At the household level, microfinance has transformed how individuals -particularly women in the Global South - access credit, enabling entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses, smooth income, and invest in health and education.

Our Investment Focus: Practical Finance and Real Lives

We seek to invest in funds that expand access to affordable, quality financial products and services - with a strong emphasis on underserved people, individuals (microfinance) and enterprises (MSMEs). Below are some of the strategies we seek to invest in, and in doing so, can therefore align to various United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs): 

• Fintech that lowers costs, improves transparency, and builds reliable credit profiles for the previously un  or under banked. 
• SME and trade finance that fuels working capital cycles so businesses can hire, produce, and export. 
• Agri finance that helps farmers invest in inputs, storage, and processing to increase yields and incomes. 
• Vehicle and asset finance that connects workers to opportunity and small firms to productive tools. 
• Consumer finance designed for financial health—responsible, transparent products that fit household needs. 

Through the above-mentioned strategies, we align with SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 8 (Decent Work & Economic Growth), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and importantly direct capital where it can enable inclusive growth.

What Impact Looks Like

At its heart, Financial Inclusion is about dignity and agency - people having the tools to shape their own futures. We invest to improve both access and quality of financial services - so products are affordable, convenient, and genuinely useful. 

Outcomes we seek include:

• Access: More consumers and MSMEs using suitable savings, credit, and payments. 
• Quality: Products designed around customer needs, with clear pricing and responsible terms. 
• Financial health: Households gaining stability and additional discretionary income for essentials like food and healthcare. 
• Economywide effects: The multiplier Impact as transactions and new enterprises ripple through local GDP. 

Investing for Both Impact and Return

We believe investors don’t have to choose between doing good and doing well. Our approach targets market rate returns while directing capital to scalable, sustainable solutions - across liquid and illiquid strategies - so we can influence at depth (private markets) and at scale (public markets) across both Emerging Markets (EM) and Developed Markets (DM). To date, we have had a preference towards EM, where the need - and the potential for meaningful change - is greatest. The EM markets are home to the majority of the world’s population and face persistent financing gaps that well-designed capital can bridge. 

Measuring What Matters 

We believe Impact is only real if it’s measured and managed. We look for managers who can quantify reach and results - for example, the number of customers served, the volume of loans disbursed to MSMEs, or evidence of improved financial health - and complement that with human stories from end beneficiaries and we encourage  use of widely adopted frameworks (such as IRIS+) with clear reporting against relevant SDGs. Alongside the SDGs we have defined per Impact thematic, we also recognise that ‘cross-cutting SDGs’ exist which are integrated into most of our investments.

Our Theory of Change for Financial Inclusion - in plain language

A Theory of Change connects inputs and activities to outputs, outcomes, and impact. 
For Financial Inclusion, simplified, this can look like: Fair finance in → better decision-making framework(s) → resilient households & firms → thriving, more equal communities i.e. more decent work, less inequality → sustainable, inclusive growth.

Financial Inclusion in Action – Case Study

Our vision for a better world is one in which the Impact of an investment is taken into consideration in every investment decision made. Through one of our fund investments, Quona Capital, capital is invested in consideration of the Impact Theme of Financial Inclusion across EM globally. Within the Quona Capital portfolio is a high growth, high impact company based in Brazil, Creditas. 
 

Creditas at a glance

Creditas is Latin America’s leading secured lending platform, offering an integrated, digital first ecosystem that lets consumers borrow, purchase, and insure across three verticals: housing, mobility, and work. Its end to end technology and proprietary underwriting unlock affordable, collateralized credit with a market leading NPS of 80+. Quona has been a key shareholder and board partner since 2015, closely supporting overall development and recently supporting Creditas’ impact measurement via an impact measurement project, called 60 Decibels  (for more information please see: https://60decibels.com)

Market gap

Brazil’s consumer credit is dominated by short term, high rate unsecured loans (avg 41% APR; 300%+ on credit cards). Despite high asset ownership (65% of homes, 75% of cars owned outright), traditional banks have underused asset backed lending, leaving >$3T in collateral untapped and millions underserved—especially in Northern Brazil and Mexico (market data source: Quona Capital).

Creditas’ solution

Affordable secured loans (home, auto, payroll benefits) help consumers refinance expensive debt, manage household finances, and invest in their future—delivered through a platform  for high quality, collateralized credit and expansion into underserved regions.

Early impact indicators (survey results based on data collected by 60  Decibels)

• 65% of Creditas’ clients had no prior access to a comparable service (60% men; 70% women).
• 62% could not easily find a good alternative (top alternatives: national/digital banks, government programs, small business credit).
• 40% used loans for business purposes (notably inventory purchases and renovations).
• 57% report improved quality of life after engaging with Creditas.

The above example shows Financial Inclusion and Theory of Change in practice, and the meaningful positive change that emerges when capital is directed to underserved borrowers. Capital therefore reaches people and MSMEs via fit-for-purpose products from responsible providers; this in turns driving access to helpful financial frameworks (e.g. tools, platforms) that enable and support payments technology and digitalization. 

Through our Impact investing discipline, and Financial Inclusion as a key Impact Theme, Anthos Fund & Asset Management seeks to promote greater financial literacy, growing businesses, and steadier cash flows ultimately supporting communities to thrive through the creation of local enterprise and resulting in a reduction of inequality, directly through access to decent work. Overall driving sustainable, inclusive growth.