Glossary

Advancing gender equality

Contribute to SDG 5 and advancing gender equality by understanding the gender specific impacts of our investments including women as project affected people, and through gender lens investments that target women as entrepreneurs, consumers or employees.

Being a responsible, compliant, transparent & accountable bank

Ensure compliance by FMO and its employees with (inter)national laws, regulations and standards of responsible business conduct and integrity applicable to FMO. This includes topics such as data protection & privacy, tax, anti-money laundering, counter-terrorism financing, targeted financial sanctions, anti-bribery, and anti-corruption procedures, remuneration of management, and ethical behavior. FMO strives to be accountable through reporting on activities and performance in a transparent and timely way. This includes making public relevant investment information which enables (local) stakeholders to provide feedback or additional information on our (proposed) investments.

Being an inclusive organization

Offer a professional working environment where all employees feel included, valued and respected and able to be their authentic selves and achieve their full potential. Diverse and inclusive teams enhance creativity and innovation, generating different ideas, which lead to more balanced decision-making and better solutions with higher impact. By focusing on Diversity and Inclusion we challenge ourselves to reflect on our behaviors, assumptions, unconscious biases and perceptions of ourselves and others; and to learn and adjust if needed.

Contributing to decent work & economic growth

Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and full and productive employment for all. Through our investments we focus on job creation but also on increasing the quality of jobs.

Cooperation & harmonization with other DFIs

Cooperate with other (E)DFIs and participate in harmonization initiatives with the aim to adopt common approaches to for instance E&S assessments and the measurement of economic impact and social impact. We focus on areas that align with FMO’s strategy and that have the potential to achieve the greatest benefits for our customers.

Enabling meaningful innovation

Enable adjacent and transformational innovation as opposed to incremental innovation. In practice this means we aim for substantial innovations which have a significant impact and make a real difference in our industry.

Engaging with partners & local communities

Engage with a wide range of partners and increasing of FMO’s local presence to realize impact, manage risk and connect with local communities.

Ensuring employee development, engagement, health & wellbeing

Create an inspiring working environment where employees are enabled to achieve their full potential and have impact through meaningful work, by offering career opportunities, a range of professional courses and trainings as well as (preventative) health consultations related to work-life balance and stress-related issues.

Ensuring higher productivity & efficiency

Increase organizational efficiency, ensuring that behaviors, processes and systems are conducive to growth as such that we can maximize impact while managing increasing (regulatory) complexities in our work.

Maintaining financial sustainability

Ensure that FMO’s business model results in long-term profitability within the boundaries of its business mandate, its risk appetite, its capital requirement, and is in line with the applicable laws and regulations.

Managing impact

Identify and monitor the positive and negative impacts that FMO has on people and the planet and manage impacts accordingly to reduce negative and increase positive impacts. This applies to the investment and business strategy and throughout all the steps of the investment process, from the deal screening to the due diligence, deal structuring, investment management and exit. Evaluations help us learn from the results that our financial and non-financial activities create in order to continuously improve.

Mobilizing private & public capital

Mobilize third party capital (private and public) to scale up the total capital invested and impact in emerging and frontier markets.

Promoting ESG management & value add

Work with our customers to create environmental, social and governance impact, integrated throughout the investment process, with a focus on avoiding or mitigating negative effect for local communities and building stronger local partnerships to better understand and address contextual risks. In addition, we work towards transforming ESG practices at customer, sector and/or industry level to deliver positive impact across all the SDGs and avoid and mitigate negative social and environmental impacts, including on local communities.

Providing capacity development

Assist our customers and prospective customers to improve their performance and to become more competitive, by promoting and facilitating the transfer of knowledge and skills, thereby strengthening important organizational capabilities.

Reducing inequalities

Reduce inequalities by investing in the least developed countries and fragile states, investing in inclusive businesses to increase opportunities and income for people in the bottom 40% of income distribution and investing to advance the economic empowerment of women and other marginalized populations.

Supporting customers to safeguard human rights

Support customers to safeguard human rights, including freedom of expression, labor rights, land rights, and other civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, for people directly or indirectly affected by the activities that we finance, in line with the UN Guiding Principles for businesses and human rights.