Ours is a different company

SIMA is a rebellion against the corporate financial world Michael and I grew up in: large corporate banks like Deutsche Bank - where I worked for 17 years - and credit rating agencies like Moody’s - where Michael had worked. We both felt the need for a next generation of impact investment managers that is transparent and cares about the environmental and social balance.

So we created SIMA, a company with a different culture, that is transparent and inclusive. Everybody knows how much I earn, for example. All employees can attend board meetings, not just senior people. This makes perfect sense to us because, if you want to bring people up in the company, you have to give them exposure.

Our values are transparency, entrepreneurship, innovation, logic and fairness.

Transparency brings logic and fairness. Our HR policy, for example, bans “gossip”. It is just wasted energy and we encourage direct discussion. If you have an issue with me, then you come and talk to me and we’ll solve it together. It is important to be self-critical. Each year, we talk about what isn’t going well at SIMA and share the outcomes with our people. Also, it makes no sense to discuss these things only once a year, so we follow up on a quarterly basis. Of course, we also talk about what goes well!

SIMA consists of 40 people, and except for Michael and I, we are in emerging markets spread over Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zimbabwe, India and Pakistan. Being in the field allows us to create jobs locally and makes it easier to stay on top of our relationships in a cost-effective manner, even though we pay our people up to 30% more than the local average.

We wrote the first code of conduct for the microfinance industry, and Michael and I wrote the first draft of the client protection principles for the off-grid solar industry.

In 2010-2011, when nobody knew about off-grid solar, we started to invest in the sector. After that, we launched SIMA and we created the SIMA Off-Grid Solar and Financial Access Senior Debt Fund I, one of the first large funds in the off-grid solar sector, at USD 90 million. Our customers include d.light, Greenlight planet, Bboxx and other leading off-grid solar companies. We also manage the Energy Access Relief Fund (EARF), which has responded to needs in the sector and has, so far, closed 96 loans in one year - unprecedented in this industry - to energy access companies affected by covid-19. The EARF also employs a gender lens and is 2X Challenge qualified.

At the moment, with everyone chasing the bigger solar projects, we are looking at smaller, mission focused ones, and we are doing the due diligence for our upcoming Commercial and Industrial (C&I) Green Bond. We work with local solar developers and project managers and offer them working capital, inventory loans, bridges to equity, etc. We are also creating a code of conduct for them.

Other business

Next to our investment activities, we have our advisory business, in which we arrange transcations and advise impact investors. We also advise and help companies with financial controls, unit economics (which demonstrates how much value each item—or “unit”—generates for a business), and impact frameworks.

Finally, there’s our “social businesses”.

The first one is an education finance company called Taleem Finance Company, which we helped start and funds schools in Pakistaan.

Our second social business is Asaan Ghar Finance, an affordable housing fintech company in Pakistan – although it is our ambition to expand outside the country. To me, online home financing is the next big revolution after microfinance. Countries like Kenya, with a population of about 50 million, only have 20,000 mortgages – there is a clear need.

Thirdly, we created the SIMA Impact Foundation, which provides zero-interest loans to students in India, Kenya, Pakistan or Uganda that are interested in impact investing. The Foundation provides the funding, gives them a computer, and we also provide them with practical experience through internships. These students come from low-income backgrounds, and they know first-hand the issues that impact investing is trying to solve.

We are very grateful to BIO for being an early investor, which helped us launch our first off-grid solar fund and helped establish SIMA as an impact fund manager.