Welcome to NEFI

Welcome to the Homepage of the Network of European Financial Institutions for SMEs (NEFI)

The Network of European Financial Institutions for SMEs (NEFI), which was founded in 1999, consists of 15 financial institutions from 14 member states of the European Union and Croatia:

ALMI (Sweden), AWS (Austria), BDB (Bulgaria), Finnvera (Finland), HBOR (Croatia), Hipoteku Banka (Latvia), ICO (Spain), KfW Bankengruppe (Germany), KREDEX (Estonia), MCC (Italy), MFB (Hungary), Oséo (France), SID (Slovenia), SNCI (Luxembourg) and SZRB (Slovakia).

These institutions share a public mission to facilitate the access to finance for SMEs by offering them financial services and expertise. This mission was entrusted to them by the government and/or the legislation in force in their respective countries. Other, similar tasks have been assigned to the member institutions in the fields of the environment and infrastructure, among other things. All NEFI partners act complementarily to and in co-operation with the national banking system through co-financing, risk-sharing, expertise and advice in order to address shortcomings in the SME financial markets.

As a European network of specialised financial institutions, NEFI pursues the following goals:

to maintain a permanent and constructive dialogue on SME financing issues with the European Union institutions or with other SME-related European associations and federations

to provide expertise and advice for the EU and its financial institutions in the planning and implementation of EU-wide promotional and financing schemes

to facilitate the access of SME clients to both European and national financing schemes.

In 2007, NEFI institutions actively supported and financed a total of more than 313,000 SMEs all over Europe with about € 54 billion of financing in the form of loans and guarantees.