History

• We celebrated the first 31 years of our history.
• We executed a successful Exchange Offer of our outstanding 2024 bond for a new bond due in 2028, with 64% acceptance. Subsequently, we carried out an early redemption of the remaining outstanding bond maturing in 2024.

• Apoyo Financiero Inc. (AFI) has obtained a license to grant loans as a "Regulated Lender" in Texas.
• Financiera Independencia delivered the best results in the history of the company with the strongest balance sheet ever.

• We announced an agreement for the sale of Finsol Brazil.
• Apoyo Financiero Inc. (AFI) has obtained a license to grant loans as a "Consumer Lender" in Arizona.

• We implemented a strategy to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.
• We strategically returned to our "core" achieving the successful divestment of our group credit business, strengthening our structure and balance sheet.
• We announce the signing of the sale agreement for the payroll credit business.

• En 2019 continuamos trabajando en consolidar procesos centralizados y estandarizados del Centro Operativo en Aguascalientes (COA); se le asignaron más funciones con el propósito de convertirlo en un soporte integral de la operación, bajo una misma plataforma, lo que nos permitirá elevar los índices de calidad, seguridad y eficiencia en el servicio.

• Financial Independence celebrates its 25th anniversary.


• New Business Model, in which we were able to consolidate processes and strategies among the networks that make up the Group, since we absorbed the best practices of each of them, concentrating them on a single operating model. In addition, we laid the foundations for the following years towards a total strengthening and we achieved successful communication and interaction between the different areas, which leads us to the achievement of objectives set around decision-making.

It was a year of profound changes for Financial Independence. We make important operational and financial decisions for our transition to a business model that takes advantage of new technologies to strengthen efficiencies and profitability. We also resume prudent growth.

As a result of these changes, the Company obtained a stronger financial and operational structure:

• On the corporate side, we consolidate the corporate functions of the group for the financial, risk management, compliance, audit and technology areas to optimize synergies, facilitate the exchange of best practices and ensure a homogeneous implementation of risk policies and strategies between subsidiaries.


• On the financial side, we refinance most of our debt through the early amortization of portfolio securitization and the dollar bond with maturities in 2018 and 2019 respectively. These were replaced by a US $ 250 million bond due in 2024, which increased the average maturity of the Company's debt from 1.2 to 5.2 years.

Additionally, we continue to take advantage of our technology investments. Financiera Independencia is now capitalizing on the long-term benefits of migrating its analytical database to Google Big-Query, which resulted in dramatically faster processing times, and access to new analytical tools and decision-making. We also continue with the migration of our servers to the cloud.

Consistent with our strategic approach of privileging the quality and profitability of the loan portfolio, Financiera Independencia closed with an ICV of 5.5%, the lowest in more than 8 years and much lower than the industry average. Additionally, we maintained the exchange of best practices between subsidiaries, obtaining important synergies, which allowed us an additional decrease in costs and an increase in operating efficiency.

Faithful to our persevering search for innovation, this year we achieved an important breakthrough in the Information Technology area, which marks a leading trend in the market: the beginning of the transfer of our operation to the cloud. This period marks a turning point in the use of technology, whose results in terms of efficiency and profitability will not take long to be verified.

Today we have the experience of 24 years of operation in the microcredit market, under a unique and diversified model. In addition to this, the technological advances that we have developed offer us as at no other time in our trajectory a solid basis for growth.

The disciplined implementation of our strategic approach to privilege the quality and profitability of the portfolio over its size, allowed us to reach our goals in a year that was difficult due to a complicated economic context in our 2 main markets, Mexico and Brazil . Although the portfolio had a lower growth than initially expected, we achieved the revised goals in terms of portfolio quality and profit.

The economic situation allowed us to make an introspection to optimize our costs, be more efficient and rethink the growth plans for a subsidiary forward. Thus, during 2015 we closed a net of 21 branches and service offices, 1 of the Operation Centers (León) and reduced the workforce by more than 13%. Independence will be contracted to be a smaller but better focused and more profitable subsidiary, while the group's growth towards AEF and AFI will be redirected and its number of branches will be increased by 40% and 100% respectively over the next 3 years.

The results achieved underline the success of the Financial Independence approach in quality and profitability, and the competitive advantage achieved by having transformed over the past several years into a diversified group with 5 subsidiaries, operations in 3 countries, and a growing variety of products and services. We are a stronger group than its parts, where the weakest performance of a subsidiary at any given time can easily be compensated by the best performance of the others; allowing us to achieve a more reliable and balanced result among all.

In this second year of operations under the new strategic framework, we continue to demonstrate that the disciplined application of the new operating policies allows us to achieve our objectives of quality and profitability, even in a more complex economic context than expected in Mexico and Brazil.

In addition to the advances in the operation, we optimize the financial structure, by improving the profile and cost of virtually all of our liabilities; reaching minimum historical funding rates. As part of this fiscal year, we issued Ps.1,500.0 million in Fiduciary Stock Certificates Supported by Loans; the first securitization of a private microcredit portfolio in the country. Additionally, Finsol Brasil reduced its funding cost by expanding its access through HSBC, to fund the “compulsory” program of the Brazilian Central Bank. On the commercial level, we expand the service portfolio, implementing new insurance and the sale of cell phone plans and devices.

We celebrate the first two decades of our history and successfully complete the first year of operations under the new strategic approach. We reach historically low levels of the Past Due Portfolio Index (ICV) at various times of the year. In addition, we acquired 23% of the remaining shares of AFI, thus consolidating our presence and growth prospects in the United States. In addition, Finsol Brasil modified its legal structure from a nonprofit entity to a profit entity, obtaining greater flexibility in terms of the services and sources of funding that it can access.

In the face of a more complex economic and competitive context, the Company decided to make radical changes to its strategic approach, implementing new operating policies that privilege the quality and profitability of the loan portfolio over its size.

We strengthened our presence in the main metropolitan areas of Mexico by acquiring the total of the Family Economic Support (AEF) actions. We also continue with our international expansion, by entering the US market, by acquiring 77% of the shares of Apoyo Financiero Inc. (AFI).

We strengthen our expansion strategy within the country, and at the same time we enter for the first time, in the international market, with the acquisition of Financiera Finsol, the second largest company in Mexico in the granting of group microcredits, with operations also in Brazil. This operation was financed through a capital increase with the participation of Eton Park Capital Management L.P. During that year, the placement of US $ 200 million of bonds, issued under the 144A / Reg S rules, was achieved, which positioned us as the first microfinance institution in the region to access the international debt market.

We transform our legal constitution to that of Multiple Object Financial Society (SOFOM). This made us more versatile to undertake new business opportunities. We started trading on the Mexican Stock Exchange as a public company.

We open our services to the self-employment sector.

We emerged as the First Limited Object Financial Society (SOFOL) of Mexico and as pioneers in the offer of individual microcredits to individuals in the low-income sector.