A guarantee agreement with the EIF will facilitate lending to arts and culture professionals.
Triodos Bank and the EIF already jointly support the creative sector in Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands.

Triodos Bank will start offering film financing in Germany to support companies in the arts and culture sector through a guarantee agreement with the European Investment Fund (EIF). The initial focus will be on providing interim financing for film grants and commissioned productions.

The new team headed by Björn Schümann, who recently joined Triodos Bank for this very purpose and has many years of experience in this area, will work from Hamburg to serve clients across the arts and culture scene in Germany. The first film project financing agreements have already been successfully concluded.

According to Schümann, “Art and culture is a very important area for Triodos Bank, which has been financing international film productions for a long time. It is particularly important for us to support cultural professionals and a diverse cultural offer in these times. We are therefore pleased to be able to offer such financing in Germany as well, especially as others are pulling out of the market. The exclusive cooperation with the European Investment Fund and the guarantee agreement give us additional room for manoeuvre.”

Triodos Bank and the EIF signed a guarantee agreement in the form of a Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility (CCS GF) during the summer.

Triodos Bank to extend support for cultural and creative sectors with EU backing (eif.org)

This will make it easier for Triodos Bank to grant loans of up to €200 million in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Germany over the next two years, with less capital required from entrepreneurs in the creative and cultural sectors.

The Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility is managed by the EIF on behalf of the European Commission and is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the main pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe. It was launched in June 2016 under the Creative Europe programme (2014-2020). The facility benefits micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the cultural and creative sectors, which often struggle to obtain debt financing for their projects.

In Germany, Triodos Bank will focus on film financing.

Christina Schmidt, Head of Business Banking Triodos Bank Germany, said: “Triodos Bank already finances arts and culture. Artists and culture professionals make an important contribution to society by connecting ideas and people, and by stimulating, promoting and reflecting positive change. At the Triodos Group, we have extensive experience in financing cultural entrepreneurship. The partnership with the EIF will enable us to financially support filmmakers who would otherwise struggle to get regular bank loans. The Cultural and Creative Sectors Guarantee Facility provides a major incentive for them, especially now that the COVID-19 pandemic has put the cultural sector under immense pressure.”

EIF Chief Executive Alain Godard said:

“The cultural and creative sectors remain under enormous pressure in all EU countries due to COVID restrictions. The availability and affordability of financing will play a major role in helping these sectors get through the crisis and back on a path of sustainable growth. The EIF is pleased to be working with Triodos Bank, with the support of the European Commission, to help bring this much-needed EU financing to the companies that really need it.”

Background information

The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank Group. Its central mission is to support Europe’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by helping them to access finance. The EIF invests in venture and growth capital funds and develops guarantee and microfinance instruments that specifically target small and medium-sized enterprises. In this role, it fosters EU objectives in support of innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth, and employment.

The EIF and Triodos Bank have an existing partnership targeting social enterprises. In 2018, they signed the first social entrepreneurship guarantee agreement in the Netherlands under the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation. Since its launch in 2018, Triodos Bank has signed around 450 transactions under a social entrepreneurship guarantee agreement in the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.

Triodos Bank

Triodos Bank N.V. (www.triodos.de) is Europe’s leading sustainability bank. Founded in 1980, it now has over 740 000 customers who can rely on Triodos Bank to finance only companies, institutions and projects that contribute to the well-being of people and the environment, for example in the fields of renewable energy, organic farming, education, care for the elderly and sustainable real estate. Triodos Bank, Triodos Investment Management and Triodos Private Banking have a combined business volume of €22.7 billion. Triodos Bank has 1 668 employees across five countries in Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany. Triodos Bank is one of the founders of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values (www.gabv.org), an international network of 60 leading sustainability banks.

In 2020, Triodos Bank was named test winner in the category “ESG Fund Offer” by the German business magazine Euro am Sonntag and was voted “Best Sustainable Bank” for the fourth time by its customers on the BankingCheck.de portal.

Press contact

Triodos Bank: Florian Koss, presse@triodos.de, tel.: +49 69 7171 9183

EIF: Donata Riedel, d.riedel@eib.org, tel.: +49 30 590047 912, mobile: +49 151 1465 9021
Website: www.eif.org – Press Office: +352 4379 21000, press@eib.org
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