Annual (PMN) Conference 2020
The Annual PMN Conference was held on the 25th and 26th November 2020. Our management team including Yasir Ashfaq represented PMIC at the conference. CEO spoke at the opening session of the conference “Sustaining Resilience, Microfinance in a Post Pandemic Era”. He indicated towards the resilience of the sector and its clients in the wake of COVID. The clients and the sector have braved the delinquency crisis of 2008, floods of 2010, excessive rains in 2012, drought of 2018 and several other crisis and have always maintained financial discipline and portfolio quality. He highlighted the steps taken by PMIC to support the sector and appreciated the policies of the government and regulators in supporting the sector and its clients. He also deliberated upon the initiatives being taken by PMIC to crowd in financing through commercial banks and capital markets and the need to employ to technology to ensure access and reduction in delivery costs.
Saqib Siddiqui (Head of SDD) participated in the Plenary session on Policy Dialogue where he spoke about the financing for the Microfinance sector coming in from PMIC, commercial banks, capital markets and developments agencies. Rizwan Sheikh attended the Plenary session on Promoting Resilience for MFPs (Head of CFI&B) as a panelist and highlighted the dynamics of Social Impact Fund being rolled out by PMIC in collaboration with National Investment Trust and how PMIC is committed to attracting funds from capital markets through exotic financial instruments and approaches.
At the PMN conference, PMIC also officially launched Pakistan’s first ever “Social Impact Mutual Fund” for Microfinance Sector players in partnership with NIT, which is the largest mutual fund entity in the country with maximum number of retail investors. The Fund will be a conduit for Microfinance Institutions in particular to attract funding from retail and high net worth individuals, insurance companies, corporates, mutual funds and many more, which they can’t in current regulatory structure.Consequently this will open up capital markets platform for sector players and pave way for future growth.
