Our History
The NGO Centro de Fomento a Iniciativas Económicas "FIE" (FIE NGO) is a non-profit Non-Governmental Organization, which was conceived in mid-1984 by María del Pilar Ramírez, María Rosa del Pilar Velasco, María Victoria Rojas, Helga Beatriz Salinas and Maria Eugenia Butron. Five women who take on the challenge of responding to the credit needs of low-income sectors of the population that did not have access to the traditional banking system, through an innovative form of credit and training.
The FIE NGO was born with the philosophy of supporting low-income groups that generate productive activities. The projects to be executed must have a training component for better management and provide the beneficiary groups with better conditions in the adoption of appropriate techniques. Monitor the process of each project, verifying compliance with the activities and the objectives pursued. Design methodologies and training materials for teaching management, organization, and production techniques for microenterprises, executing training programs in rural and urban areas, strengthening business management.
During more than 30 years of work, the FIE NGO showed that it was possible to provide solutions to the existing situation of poverty and marginalization in the country through access to credit for an impoverished population excluded from the conventional financial system, supporting to the development of low-income groups by granting small loans to finance their economic projects.
Part of its success lies in the fact that from its first projects it used the "credit with training" premise, designing products tailored to the needs of its clients. In this way, in its first project implemented in Ayo Ayo, an accounting and administration teaching methodology was developed to complement the garment production process, so that the recipients were able to adequately manage the resources for their own benefit. resources that were being provided.
The FIE NGO manages to develop its own credit methodology, together with training programs in the areas of accounting, costs and marketing, offering lines of credit for artisans and producers, using individual credit and with lower interest rates than those of other credit institutions.
In its growth, in March 1998, it consolidated the “Private Financial Fund for the Promotion of Economic Initiatives S.A. (FFP-FIE S.A.)" as a regulated financial intermediation entity, with the aim of expanding its coverage to capture public savings and improve credit conditions. In this new financial entity, the NGO FIE is the main shareholder. On March 17, 2010, FFP-FIE became a Bank, with the main objective of promoting efficient financial intermediation to sustainably promote the development of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises.
On June 12, 2008, the FIE NGO, with the objective of promoting and strengthening its investments, replicating and transcending the philosophy, culture, knowledge and experience in the microfinance sector to other markets, as well as improving access and conditions of financial intermediation services, constitutes the first microfinance investment company in Spain CONFIE SL.
FIE Gran Poder S.A. began its operations in Buenos Aires in August 2001 with the transfer of knowledge from the Bolivian experience of FIE NGO, adapting them to the Argentine reality and the needs of the clientele, which in its beginnings was only Bolivian. The microcredit, concept and practice with which FIE manages to position its mission, vision and objectives was the purpose of positioning itself in Argentina, that is to say "to help the development of micro and small enterprises and improve the quality of life of thousands of people", people without access to conventional credit institutions.
In 2012, Banco FIE became a "Multiple Bank", and under the philosophy of the NGO, to expand inclusive financial services, and strengthening the line of action towards the agricultural and productive sector, with the commitment to contribute to food sovereignty. of our country, 2014 begins with the first loans to the agricultural chain.
Faithful to its origins and institutional commitments and returning to the essence that gave birth to it, FIE NGO assumes the challenge of strengthening the agricultural sector of the department of Santa Cruz, developing a Technical Assistance Program related to its productive activities, thus contributing to the social economic development and sustainability of micro and small businesses.
Developing a technical support process that is timely, personalized, and appropriate to the conditions of each productive unit, which is also sustainable over time, will allow the small agricultural producer to have information and extensive technical guidance, with the availability of more than one alternative free of commercial or economic conditions, thus managing to strengthen the capacities of the small farmer and/or rancher to improve the quality of production and their productivity.
NGO Centro de Fomento a Iniciativas Económicas (FIE NGO) was born to respond to the credit needs of low-income sectors of the population that did not have access to conventional financial services. Recalling the origins of FIE requires understanding the beginning and trajectory of microcredit in Bolivia, going back and placing oneself not only in time and space, but also in history and in the account of the causes and actions that led to thinking about this credit modality as one of the most important components of the contemporary economy in the global context.
In the early 1970s, a new approach gave way to a different perception of women and their role in the family, work, and society. If until then women were considered as weak subjects worthy of support and assistance, now they were stripped of that stigma to assume an active role and in equal conditions, rights and opportunities as men. In this sense, the way of conceiving development also underwent a turn when considering the female role.
Originally, microcredit programs in Bolivia were fundamentally promoted by NGOs linked to –and financed by– bilateral and multilateral international cooperation agencies. To initiate activities, the first credit programs that were launched had a high subsidy component consisting, basically, of a donation for the formation of the entity's initial capital.
The protagonist and pioneer of this stage was the FIE NGO, which was founded in 1985. Since then, the raison d'être of this non-profit entity has been framed in the need to respond and provide solutions to the situation of poverty and marginality through access to credit for an impoverished population excluded from the conventional financial system, supporting in this way, the economic and social development of low-income groups through the granting of small loans to finance their economic projects.