The institution Microfinance Farm Nicaragua, Limited Companyclosed operations, because “it has no intention of continuing to develop microfinance activities,” reported the National Microfinance Commission (Conami) through a resolution published in the official gazette, La Gaceta, this Thursday, January 26.
According to publicationthe legal representative of the microfinance institution, Julio César Sobalvarro, formally requested the cancellation of the registration on September 7, 2022.
The decision was formally expressed at the Extraordinary General Shareholders’ Meeting of Finca held on August 31 of last year. In it, the Board certified that “to date, the debts with international funders have been canceled and the institution’s portfolio has also been fully settled; and most of the company’s assets other than the portfolio have already been sold.
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In turn, Conami points out that, on January 28, 2022, the Financial Farm transferred its entire loan portfolio to the Company for the Support of and Development of Micro and Small Urban and Rural Enterprise SA (MyCredit SA)
Likewise, “the assets where the parent company operated” were disposed of, located in Managua, while the real estate where the Academy operates is for sale.
According to Conami, Farm It has not carried out microfinance activities since December 2021.
The causes of the closure of operations have not been clarified by the extinct microfinance institution. In 2021, it was indicated that the fall in the numbers of Farm It would be what caused the closure of all its branches. This decrease caused it to lose its financial status and was no longer regulated by the Superintendency of Banks.
Our newspaper reports confirm that the microfinance institution began the closure of its branches, in an accelerated manner, that year. The notice of the massive closure of its branches began in October. In November the rest of the six that were still operating in June of that year were closed, leaving no branches since then. In 2017—before the government crackdown on protesters in 2018—, Farm it had twenty locations.
The extinct financial entity had been in the Nicaraguan market for 30 years. As of April 2019, Financiera Finca Nicaragua registered a 15.5% share in the Microfinance market, accounting for 12,000 clients with more than 12,400 loans. Likewise, it has invested a total of 2.7 million dollars in social capital in the last two years, the Nicaraguan Association of Microfinance Institutions (Asomif) reported at the time.
