Invest International Annual Report 2022: Bridging the Gap (2024)

We bridge a gap between traditional banks and entrepreneurs seeking financing for international activities. With our project development activities and financing solutions, we build a bridge between the insurance activities of export credit insurer Atradius Dutch State Business and the services of government agency RVO. We bridge the gap between demand from governments in emerging markets and developing countries, and green innovative solutions, an area in which the Netherlands is particularly strong.

Responding to the needs of entrepreneurs and governments

As a financier operating on behalf of the Dutch government, we respond to the capital needs of Dutch and/or Dutch-linked companies operating abroad. We offer them financing solutions that enable their international ambitions and contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We also support governments in developing countries looking for infrastructure solutions and contribute to solving global challenges, such as the energy transition.

There is a market for our offering

Our first year has shown that there is strong demand for international financing. We were established to work with other parties to facilitate the funding of a greater number of impactful projects; mainly for SMEs. In this way, we prevent entrepreneurs with good business plans from falling between the cracks in finding the right financing.

The first year at a glance

Our organisation was formed from RVO (Netherlands Enterprise Agency) and FMO (the Dutch development bank). With this foundation, we were able to get off to a flying start and pay attention to a clear range of existing government schemes and products; in order to become the ‘one-stop shop’ for entrepreneurs looking for funding for their international activities. Much has been invested in setting up a customer- and solution-oriented organisation in which the project or entrepreneur has a central role. Looking back, from a financial perspective, the organisation performed above expectations in 2022:

• €257 million was invested from its own investment capital, which results in a total portfolio of €274 million.
• €127 million was committed to infrastructure projects in emerging markets, which results in a total committed portfolio of €875 million.
• €38 million went to projects of Dutch startups and SMEs operating abroad, making this total portfolio now €211 million. We helped 140 SMEs.

Organisational growth

We put a lot of energy into building the organisation last year. The company has grown from 75 employees at the start in October 2021 to 131 employees by the end of 2022. This is a solid foundation for a future-proof organisation.

Created impact

Invest International’s activities focus on SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth) and SDG 13 (Climate action) where our ambition is to have two-thirds of the portfolio contribute to these SDGs. The past year was all about making our impact measurable. For instance, we were able to measure the number of jobs created by realised projects. These totaled 12,979 direct and 14,665 indirect jobs, 50.1% of which were filled by women. In the coming period, we will work on further improving this measurement so that we can provide more guidance on this.