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Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva:

"Geneva happens to be the main epicenter worldwide in terms of microfinance investments," Roland Domicié, CEO of Symbiotics, an asset manager specialized in microfinance investments with $1bn in AuM in 20 different funds, told the latest Opalesque Geneva Roundtable. "So while it's just a rather small niche for global markets – just $10 billion of private foreign direct investments out of a total market size of about $100 billion – over 30% of those investments are managed in Switzerland and over half of that in Geneva."

Symbiotics was launched during the time of the UN International Year of Micro-Credit in 2005. The asset class, he explains, is more established here than anywhere else, but one still has to educate investors about the relatively new concept of investing in small frontier markets banks. His firm has specialized in assisting large institutional investors accessing this market, and has invested $2bn in 50 different countries such as Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan and Bolivia, "countries around the globe that are not necessarily connected or integrated in the global financial market."

Microfinance investing brings in a big de-correlation to investors’ portfolios; especially those that can cope with lower liquidity and are looking for growth. There is a natural understanding ......................

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