Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Good for Business, Investments, Markets and Companies

"The aim of the unsecured loan agreement concluded with the European Investment Fund is to support companies active in Estonia and to help them achieve growth and their development goals," Hans Pajoma, board member and chief of corporate banking at Coop Pank, said in a press release.

Under the agreement, the EIF will place eight million euros in Coop Pank for ten years, to which the bank must add another as much. Hence the arrangement provides the Estonian bank with an additional financing facility of 16 million euros.

"With the support from the European Investment Fund we can finance businesses that meet valid European Union criteria for small and medium sized enterprises, which means that their number of employees must be smaller than 500. The size of the loan must be between 25,000 and 500,000 euros per customer and the length of the agreement up to 10 years," Pajoma said.

The CEO of the European Investment Fund, Pier Luigi Gilibert, said that the EIF is pleased to sign the agreement with the new financial intermediary, Coop Pank, and to thereby support the SMEs of Estonia.

The agreement was signed at the SME Assembly, the EU's annual top SME policy development event that this year is taking place in Tallinn.

The net profit of Coop Pank in the first nine months of this year totaled 4.4 million euros, including an extraordinary profit of 3.2 million euros from the sale of real estate. The loan portfolio increased 40 percent compared to the beginning of the year and amounted to 215 million euros. The deposits portfolio increased 22 percent in the first nine months, totaling 309 million euros.

The number of customers of Coop Pank increased by 1,300 during the first nine months of this year. Coop Pank along with its subsidiaries employs approximately 200 people at its headquarters and in 14 offices located across Estonia.

Coop Pank was created based on the former AS Eesti Krediidipank. As of Oct. 2 the bank's new business name is Coop Pank AS. Coop Pank's major owner is Coop Eesti - a group consisting of 19 regional consumers' cooperatives that handles the sales of food and consumer goods and has 350 stores and approximately 600,000 regular customers.