The SME Finance Forum’s Agri Finance Innovation Hub session would focus on elements such as integrated, ecosystem-driven financing models that reflect the realities of agricultural value chains, where both smallholder farmers and agri-SMEs face seasonal incomes, fragmented markets, and elevated risks. Moving beyond collateral-based lending, the Hub priorities focus on leveraging alternative data to de-risk credit, strengthening platforms that connect farmers and SMEs to inputs, markets, and buyers, and scaling supply chain and closed-loop financing models that link credit with offtake and distribution. These are complemented by long-term financing instruments, insurance-based risk mitigation, and cooperative or aggregator models that bring smallholders into formal financial ecosystems alongside SMEs. The session would be organized like a problem solving session building on the discussions held by the members over the last one year.
