Regional Office - Latin America & The Caribbean

About us

For more than 20 years in Latin America and the Caribbean, Frankfurt School has provided tailored advisory and training to all types of financial institutions, taking into account the regional peculiarities and the heterogeneity of these economies, which range from Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to the 8th largest global economy – i.e. Brazil.

A special focus is placed on financial sector development. Our key partners in the region include Pan-American institutions, multilateral development banks such as the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank and the European Investment Bank. We partner with commercial banks and other financial institutions to i) support them in creating, enhancing or expanding their outreach to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), including those in the agricultural sector and ii) improve their performance in different functional areas (strategy, risk management, processes, marketing, etc.). By enhancing our partners’ value proposition, we are able to generate a positive impact on the job and income creation in our countries of operation and consequently contribute to the overall economic development of the region.

We have advanced a clear climate finance footprint in the region through a 4-year cooperation with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the implementation of the ‘Microfinance for Ecosystem-based Adaptation to Climate Change (MEbA). In addition to traditional capacity building, we have also implemented a “Green Banking” approach, which includes the reduction of the institutions’ ecological footprint, the development of green loan products and environmental and social risk management to ensure sustainability.

Currently, Frankfurt School’s support is frequently requested to develop and/or implement diversification strategies for financial institutions in order to increase financial inclusion among women and youth populations, to provide innovative financing vehicles so that MSMEs can invest in green solutions (e.g. energy efficiency, waste management, water management, renewable energy and climate-smart agriculture), to digitalise the financial industry and to build up (disaster-) risk contingency planning.

Flagship Projects

Implementation of the EIB’s Technical Assistance Programme to the Caribbean Financial Sector

Since mid-2018, Frankfurt School experts have supported local partners to strengthen their financial and managerial capacity with the objectives of creating sustainable, responsible and well-managed organisations and improving the supply of a diverse and responsible range of financial and non-financial products that encourage income generation, especially for women and youth entrepreneurs. The Frankfurt School lead expert team is based in different hub locations, including Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, where they spearhead Technical Assistance (TA) activities in neighbouring states such as St Lucia, Dominica, Haiti and Belize.

Climate Crowd-Investing Platform

The aim of the Climate Crowd Investing Platform addresses the market failure of missing financial intermediaries to fund small-scale green investments for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) by attracting longer-term and risk-aware retail funding. Offering tangible and well-analysed investment opportunities, the platform will combine the advantages of crowd investing with those of climate-friendly investments. An important feature of the platform will be direct lending to local SMEs that are active in and/or want to invest in climate adaptation or mitigation projects. Initially, this initiative will strengthen and help sustain capital flow into green investments in Peru, and gradually expand to other countries in the region.

Innovation Financing for Development Support to the European Commission (FWC - Lot 6)

The overall framework objective is to support and advise Commission services and/or Partner Countries/ Authorities of the European Commission’s external aid programs (i.e. “EU Neighbourhood”, Latin America and Caribbean, Asia and Pacific, sub-Saharan African and Pre-accession countries) by providing individual, short-term operational services along the entire cycle of operations (from design to implementation and evaluation of EU interventions). More specifically, it aims to support investment and increase financial access for initiatives that contribute to the achievements of SDG goals (e.g. targeting causes of irregular migration, climate action, and poverty eradication). In other words, it aims to improve economic and social development through sustainable public and private investments with a focus on the creation of decent jobs.

This fund is designed as a framework programme, organised in different lots (sub-programmes). Lot 6 focuses on innovative finance for development.

Developing financial products to cope with the impact of climate change

Climate change is affecting all corners of the globe and, unfortunately, Latin America and the Caribbean is not exempt from the impact of climate change, with many countries in the region suffering from the increasing severity of various natural disasters. Aiming to increase the resilience of the region’s population (especially that of smallholder farmers) to these impacts, Frankfurt School has implemented numerous climate change adaptation and mitigation advisory projects.

To ensure tailor-made solutions, all projects are adapted to the reality of the financial institutions' (FIs) countries/regions of operation. Market studies are first carried out to understand the level of vulnerability, climate change awareness, and access to information or technical support of the target market. This allows us to support the development of demand-oriented financial products and non-financial services. Furthermore, we take a transversal organisational approach that focuses on close cooperation between the relevant business areas (e.g. retail, finance, risk and marketing) and incorporates salesforce training as well as middle/executive management coaching in the process. The goal is to achieve product sustainability, both at the client level and in terms of the overall impact on the FIs' loan portfolio growth.

Reducing the carbon footprint of financial institutions

Green banking not only refers to the development of green products to finance renewable energy or energy efficiency investments, but also relates to the reduction of the carbon footprint generated by the operations of financial institutions.

We provide advisory services to financial institutions to help them reduce their emissions of Greenhouse Gasses (GHG), taking into consideration applicable international policies and standards (ISO 14001) for the measurement of the carbon footprint. Following best practices, we target the three main scopes of ISO 14001: i) direct emissions that can be controlled/managed by the institution; ii) indirect emission generated by the consumption of electricity, and iii) emissions that occur as a consequence of organisational operations/activities but that it does not control (e.g. use of paper, business flights, staff commuting, waste management, etc.).