Australia is pleased to announce a new partnership with ARQCapital through its SME-focused investment firm ARQ SME Business Development Company (ARQ SME BDC) to mobilise private capital and support loans for small but growing women-owned or -led businesses in the Philippines.
Established in 2016, ARQCapital is a Filipino-owned, Philippine-based, SME-focused investor led by Abigail Tan, Edmund Solilapsi, and Paolo Villar, who are seasoned and experienced investment banking, private equity, and business professionals. ARQCapital provides smart, scalable, flexible, and customized financing or capital solutions to serve the critical growth stage of small and medium enterprises.
Recognising the limited availability of finance for growth-oriented women-owned or led small businesses (WSBs) moving beyond microfinance, ARQCapital established the SheSecure Sustainability Note (SheSecure), a three-year debt security instrument focused on gender -related impacts. Using Innovation Window funds from the Australian Government initiative Investing in Women (IW) as first-loss capital, ARQCapital aims to raise up to AUD 6.0 million of private capital via SheSecure. This capital, in turn, will be invested in a portfolio of small but growing women-owned or -led enterprises deploying an impact linked structure, providing financial incentives for the enterprises that meet certain gender metrics.
By linking gender indicators to financial incentives, ARQCapital hopes to demonstrate the impact of gender-inclusive practices on sustainable financial performance and address structural biases within the investing ecosystem. IW-supported research identified product mismatch and unconscious gender bias among the barriers that hinder WSBs from accessing capital. IWโs Innovation Window enables fund managers to develop and pilot alternative financial structures that address the needs of WSBs. Drawing on their deep local knowledge and a growing pipeline of investible WSBs within their countries, Innovation Window partners aim to mainstream successful financial structures, and contribute to the business case and know-how for investing in WSBs across the investment ecosystem.
In this photo: ARQCapital and representatives from the Australian Embassy in the Philippines attend the IW partner onboarding session in Manila, Philippines. Standing L-R: Patricia Vega, Strategic Communication and Partnerships Manager-Philippines, Investing in Women; Nina Yambao, former Program Development Officer (no longer with ARQ as of September); Jed Balatan and Koby Mendoza, Junior Investment Officers, ARQ; Conrad de Jesus, Impact Investing Technical Lead, Investing in Women; Grace Borja, Senior Program Officer (Economic), Australian Embassy Philippines; French Perdon, Philippinesโ Technical and Policy Reform Lead and Elaissa Mendoza, MERL Analyst, Investing in Women; Seated L-R: Edmund Solilapsi and Abigail Tan, Managing Partners, ARQCapital; Eleanor Keppelman, Impact Investing Director, Investing in Women; Simon Reid, Acting Counsellor (Economic), Australian Embassy Philippines
Since 2016, IW has played a catalytic role in increasing access to capital available to SMEs that disproportionately benefit women in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Alongside the Innovation Window, IW continues to mainstream demand for gender lens investing through marketbuilding partnerships and deploy capital to gender transformative funds, in partnership with Australian Development Investments.
Learn more about the SheSecure Sustainability Note at: https://www.arqcapital.com/shesecure