Erste Social Finance Holding was established as a joint venture between the ERSTE Foundation and Erste Group with the goal of spreading prosperity and providing access to financial services for all.

Impact organisations can play an important role to tackle societal problems while at the same time creating jobs and positive perspectives in the regions they are active in. While social businesses are already well established in Western Europe, they still face significant challenges in CEE. Building the capacities necessary to get from a great idea to a sustainable social business is key for future success. Access to financial resources is often still hard to get. Erste Social Finance aims to help unleashing the potential impact organizations have to strengthen a prosperous and democratic Europe.

Erste Social Finance follows an inclusive approach:

• Its impact program MARC offers tailor-made support to social ventures and organizations to increase the resilience of their business and improve their investment-readiness
• It develops inclusive finance products and services for high-impact organizations as well as marginalized groups ranging from grants to social banking and social finance
• It is ready to develop social finance risk models and procedures to foster social innovation in and across countries via instruments like social impact bonds or strategic impact investments
• It aims to help creating long-term solutions as a first mover. When it comes to topics like social housing or impact investment, the legal environment differs from country to country. With ERSTE Stiftung as an patient investor, Erste Social Finance has the possibility to help develop new markets as it can advocate for and support improvements in legal and regulatory environments.

Erste Social Finance offers key instruments and support to foster businesses and organizations striving for measurable social or environmental impact. Not only does this help solving societal challenges, but it creates job, promotes self-employment, and improves financial stability. Its innovative services and activities provide prove that there’s no contradiction between impact and sustainable profit.

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