Opportunity would like to offer our congratulations to our partner Credit Suisse. They were awarded a special commendation for their microfinance program in the Sustainable Global Bank of the Year category at the Financial Times/International Finance Corporation Sustainable Finance Awards.

The annual FT/IFC Sustainable Finance Awards, now in their seventh year, are the major global awards for environmentally- and socially-responsible banking and investment. The 2012 awards were presented on June 14 at a gala dinner in London attended by 200 senior decision-makers in the areas of finance and sustainability.

“The winners of this year’s awards should be congratulated as they stand out from a very strong group of financial institutions that are leading the way on making environmental and social considerations a major part of their business,” said Martin Dickson, Deputy Editor of the Financial Times and co-chair of the awards judging panel.

The award for Credit Suisse came in recognition of 10 years of comprehensive and complementary work in microfinance across all divisions of their bank. This includes investment solutions for their clients, thematic research, custody and depositary services, structuring, capital market transactions and corporate citizenship activities.

We are proud to call Credit Suisse a partner as we continue to work together to provide the best financial services possible to our clients through technology and global capacity-building initiatives. Our collaboration with them helps improve and expand clients’ access to financial tools through innovations like the electronic wallet strategy, which sustainably and profitably delivers a full range of low-cost financial services to the most impoverished and underbanked households in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The e-wallet strategy includes a mix of cell phone banking, agent networks with point of sale (POS) devices, biometric recognition, mobile banking vans, and ATMs, all of which enable us to cost-effectively provide savings, loans and insurance to rural, hard-to-reach communities. Credit Suisse’s support of our capacity-building initiatives is helping us prepare our MFI staff around the globe with the skills needed to utilize the newest banking technologies and to build in-house capacities to manage growth. We’re so proud of the work we’re doing together and we’re looking forward to making an even greater impact on the lives of people in poverty through this partnership.

Congratulations to Credit Suisse on this significant achievement!