Trade Finance guarantees with NSIA Banque Côte d'Ivoire

NSIA Banque CI is a major player in Côte d'Ivoire’s banking sector (4th out of 28). The NSIA Bancassurance Group was set up in 1995 by Jean Kacou Diagou. The Group is driven by a dynamic acquisition policy and has expanded significantly. It currently operates in 12 Central and West African countries and has some 30 subsidiaries working in the banking, insurance, real estate and technology sectors.

The project involves guarantees allocated by Proparco for credit documentary operations. NSIA Banque CI is the final beneficiary of the planned guarantee scheme: this bank is held back in the development of its activity to finance trade finance operations as it faces difficulties in finding confirming banks for the documentary credits it issues.

This operation has a twofold interest: 

1- Positive impacts on the country’s economy:

(i) Support for growth, particularly in the current macroeconomic and political context marked by the Covid-19 crisis.

(ii) Increase in the resources available for issuing banks due to the reduction, made possible by the existence of a guarantee, of the level of collateral deposits they must constitute from confirming banks.

2- A development program. The DFIs that propose these guarantee operations, which historically have a low loss rate, often consider them as an interesting tool to establish business relations with new banking clients. These relations can subsequently be developed with other types of longer-term financing.