Bankinter and EIB sign €400 million agreement to finance SMEs and mid-caps

Bankinter and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have signed an agreement today to finance investment projects promoted by SMEs (up to 250 employees) and medium-size enterprises (up to 3,000 employees) for €200 million in the industrial and service sectors. Bankinter will complement the EIB's contribution with a further €200 million, bringing the total volume of funding for SMEs and mid-caps to €400 million.

This credit line, which offers these companies access to loans with favourable conditions, low interest rates and long repayment terms, will provide up to €25 million of support for investment projects to SMEs, and up to €50 million of investment to mid-cap companies. A significant number of these projects are expected to be located in convergence regions.

This is the eighth facility of this kind that the EIB has signed with Bankinter. The last EIB/Bankinter credit line for SMEs, for a similar amount, was signed on 28 January 2013 and has been fully used.

This new agreement, which comes on top of similar initiatives signed with the European Investment Fund (EIF), the ICO (Instituto de Crédito Oficial, Spain's state credit agency) and the sociedades de garantía recíproca (mutual guarantee companies), clearly reflects Bankinter's commitment to the financial development of small and medium enterprises, which are essential catalysts for growth and job creation. These agreements provide financing to this sector, contributing resources with favourable conditions, longer terms, flexible drawdowns and low interest rates.

Businesses are a strategic segment for Bankinter. Despite a context of crisis and restrictive credit, Bankinter's lending to large and medium-size companies has grown by more than 10% annually in the past two years. The Bank, which ended the third quarter of 2013 with over €17 billion in lending to businesses, aims to reach €22 billion in 2015.

To serve this sector, in which it has more than 80,000 customers, the Bank has scaled up the workforce dedicated to corporate segments and now has a specialised sales network with more than 1,000 employees, a quarter of the total workforce.