Spain is the European leader in granting microcredits, accounting for four out of every 10 loans, worth a total of €2.1 billion

• European Microfinance Week runs from 13 to 15 November. In Spain, this sector hands out more than €2.1 billion a year to both individuals and businesses, according to data from the European Microfinance Network (EMN).
• MicroBank is the Spanish institution that granted the most loans of this type last year (six out of every 10), for a grand total of €1.383 billion, a figure that in the first half of 2024 came to €1.079 billion.

European Microfinance Week brings together practitioners from all over the world and is a big date in the calendar for those interested in microfinance and financial inclusion. Notably, Spain is the leading European country in granting microcredits to both businesses and individuals, channelling 40% of the total volume of this type of credit granted within Europe, according to the latest data from the 2023 report drawn up by the European Microfinance Network (EMN). In 2022, Spain lent more than €2.13 billion: personal microcredits amounted to €1.5 billion, while those granted to businesses came to more than €635 million.

MicroBank is the leading Spanish institution to have capitalised on the provision of microcredit in Europe. According to its 2023 annual report, it granted social impact financing worth €1.383 million in 2023, representing more than half of the microcredits granted in Spain and a quarter of those granted in Europe. In the first half of 2024, MicroBank financed 120,132 social projects, worth a total of €1.08 million.

Following Spain, by quite a distance, we have Bosnia and Herzegovina, with €538 million granted, with Romania taking third spot with €527 million. Across all of Europe, the total value of active microloans in 2022 stood at €5.272 billion, delivered to 1.2 million beneficiaries, according to the EMN. Of these, 320,000 borrowers were in Spain, comprising 261,000 individual customers and 58,000 Spanish businesses.

The Europe-wide study reveals that 42% of microcredit applicants are women, while four out of ten people living in rural areas are the main applicants for this type of loan, the majority being young people. It also shows that the migrant population accounts for a quarter of the total number of customers, with microcredits serving as a useful financial tool for getting entrepreneurial projects off the ground.

Social impact financing

This trend can also be observed in the microcredits granted by MicroBank when it comes to job creation. Aside from women and young people aged under 35 (the main segments to benefit from the jobs created thanks to MicroBank loans, the amount of which does not usually exceed €30,000), those previously out of work have also benefitted enormously from the microcredits.

In this sense, professional services, followed by the retail trade, hospitality and restaurants, as well as construction, and to a lesser extent, the primary sector and businesses linked to new technologies, were the sectors in which new professional opportunities were created thanks to MicroBank, whose lending activity was up 36.2% in 2023 compared to the previous year. This means that six out of every 10 microcredits approved in Spain last year came from MicroBank, one of the 270 financial institutions operating in Spain.

The granting of this type of loans to predominantly entrepreneurs resulted in the creation of 28,521 direct jobs last year, according to a report drawn up by KPMG and Stone Soup Consulting, up 63% on 2022. Thanks to MicroBank’s positive impact on society, self-employment was the first type of employment it helped to generate, while three out of 10 businesses were able to create new jobs for other people. A total of 8,261 businesses were able to open their doors last year thanks to the bank’s financial support, 46% more than the previous year.

In relative terms of contribution to GDP, MicroBank’s activity contributed €4.468 billion to the Spanish economy in 2023, 8.7% more than in 2022. Of this amount, €2.266 billion was direct and €2.202 million was indirect and induced, altogether equivalent to 0.3% of Spanish GDP.