The financial sector presents a 15-point plan to facilitate access to funding for business owners

On Wednesday, 24 February, during a discussion organized by the Finance Latvia Association, heads of financial institutions and experts opened a more active conversation about promoting access to funding for business development and presented a 15-point Industry Plan or the most important tasks to be completed in the next two years. The plan highlights four main areas – lending, capital market development, financial literacy, and sustainable finance.

Although we are currently facing global challenges that affect a large number of people, we see that the customer loan portfolio in Latvia is of very good quality, and we want to encourage entrepreneurs to be bolder. When we think about boosting corporate lending, it’s clear that one of the biggest issues of the decade is already knocking on our door – sustainable finance and green transformation. The financial sector wants to be the strong support for business owners, to help in the process of change and to encourage them to see growth opportunities in sustainability. We also see the need to start an active dialogue with partners from the public sector in order to reach a good model of cooperation in time. It is also necessary to raise the common understanding of the urgency of these issues among the public and entrepreneurs.”

Ieva Tetere,Chairwoman of the Council at the Finance Latvia Association, Chairwoman of the Board at AS “SEB” in Latvia

The 15-point plan provides for the development of new products to finance the “green transition” and a discussion with the public sector on tax incentive mechanisms and state support programs for sustainable initiatives. In cooperation with the FCMC and other partners, it is planned to create a sustainable financial platform. It is also planned to develop a financial literacy promotion programme for students and other age groups, a publicly available creditworthiness assessment model, an internationally competitive legal framework for securitisation, and guidelines to promote wider investment of pension funds in the Latvian economy. It is planned to conclude a memorandum of cooperation with the FCMC and the Bank of Latvia in the area of sustainability. The 15-point plan is the initial proposal to facilitate access to funding, which will be discussed with cooperation partners and improved in accordance with the discussions.

In addition, the chairs of the boards of financial institutions looked back at the work done in the sector last year, and voiced the industry forecasts for 2021. Mārtiņš Āboliņš,Economist atAS “Citadele banka”, Fiscal Discipline Council member, Head of the Macroeconomist Working Group at the Finance Latvia Association, gave an insight into the upcoming year and summarized the results of the past year, noting that the economic downturn in the Baltic States and Latvia in 2020 was significantly less than predicted at the start of the crisis – the structure of consumption has changed in favour of retail trade, there are new records in the industrial sector and exports, while the services sector is currently the weakest link in the economy. The situation in the labour market is still better than expected, the savings of the population in banks are growing rapidly, while the loan portfolio decreased in 2020, but the quality of loans has not deteriorated significantly.

The discussion was attended by Ieva Tetere, Chairwoman of the Board at AS “SEB” in Latvia, Chairwoman of the Council at the Finance Latvia Association, Reinis Rubenis, Chairman of the Board at AS “Swedbank” in Latvia, Deputy-chair of the Council at the Finance Latvia Association, Kerli Gabrilovica, Head of the Latvian branch of AS “Luminor Bank”, Roberts Idelsons, Chairman of the Board at “Signet Bank” AS, Dmitrijs Latiševs, Chairman of the Board at AS “BlueOrange Bank”, Mārtiņš Āboliņš, Economist atAS “Citadele banka”, Fiscal Discipline Council member, Head of the Macroeconomist Working Group at the Finance Latvia Association, Reinis Bērziņš, Chairman of the Board at JSC Development Finance Institution Altum, and Sanita Bajāre, Chairwoman of the Board at the Finance Latvia Association.

Video recording of the discussion: