The economy of Bahrain is heavily dependent upon oil and gas. The Bahraini Dinar is the second-highest-valued currency unit in the world. Since the late 20th century, Bahrain has heavily invested in the banking and tourism sectors. The country's capital, Manama is home to many large financial structures. Bahrain's finance industry is very successful. In 2008, Bahrain was named the world's fastest growing financial center by the City of London's Global Financial Centres Index. Bahrain's banking and financial services sector, particularly Islamic banking, have benefited from the regional boom driven by demand for oil. Petroleum is Bahrain's most exported product, accounting for 60% of export receipts, 70% of government revenues, and 11% of GDP. Aluminium is the second most exported product, followed by finance and construction materials.
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost.
Microfinance consists of financial services targeting individuals and small businesses who lack access to conventional banking and related services. Microfinance includes microcredit, the provision of small loans to poor clients; savings and checking accounts; microinsurance; and payment systems, among other services. Microfinance services are designed to reach excluded customers, usually poorer population segments, possibly socially marginalized, or geographically more isolated, and to help them become self-sufficient. ID Ghana is an example of a microfinance institution.
Output-based aid (OBA) refers to development aid strategies that link the delivery of public services in developing countries to targeted performance-related subsidies. OBA subsidies are offered in transport construction, education, water and sanitation systems, and healthcare among other sectors where positive externalities exceed cost recovery exclusively from private markets. OBA is a form of results-based financing, with similar principles as performance-based contracting.
MSCI Inc. is an American finance company headquartered in New York City. MSCI is a global provider of equity, fixed income, real estate indices, multi-asset portfolio analysis tools, ESG and climate products. It operates the MSCI World, MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) and MSCI Emerging Markets Indices among others.
FTSE International Limited trading as FTSE Russell ( "Footsie") is a British provider of stock market indices and associated data services, wholly owned by the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and operating from premises in Canary Wharf. It operates the well known UK FTSE 100 Index as well as a number of other indices. FTSE stands for Financial Times Stock Exchange.
Socially responsible investing (SRI) is any investment strategy which seeks to consider financial return alongside ethical, social or environmental goals. The areas of concern recognized by SRI practitioners are often linked to environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics. Impact investing can be considered a subset of SRI that is generally more proactive and focused on the conscious creation of social or environmental impact through investment. Eco-investing is SRI with a focus on environmentalism.
Thomson Reuters Lipper is an American financial services firm. Founded in 1973 as Lipper Analytical Services, it was acquired by Reuters in 1998.
SME finance is the funding of small and medium-sized enterprises, and represents a major function of the general business finance market – in which capital for different types of firms are supplied, acquired, and costed or priced. Capital is supplied through the business finance market in the form of bank loans and overdrafts; leasing and hire-purchase arrangements; equity/corporate bond issues; venture capital or private equity; asset-based finance such as factoring and invoice discounting, and government funding in the form of grants or loans.
Moneyfacts Group Plc is a financial information company founded in 1988 based in Norwich in the United Kingdom, employing over 80 people.
Data Explorers is a privately owned financial data and software company headquartered in London, UK, with offices in New York, US, Edinburgh and Hong Kong. The company provides financial benchmarking information to the Securities lending Industry and short-side intelligence to the Investment Management community. The company has a global dataset covering $12 trillion of securities in the lending programs of over 20,000 institutional funds.
Corporate venture capital (CVC) is the investment of corporate funds directly in external startup companies. CVC is defined by the Business Dictionary as the "practice where a large firm takes an equity stake in a small but innovative or specialist firm, to which it may also provide management and marketing expertise; the objective is to gain a specific competitive advantage." Examples of CVCs include GV and Intel Capital.
Verisk Analytics, Inc. is an American multinational data analytics and risk assessment firm based in Jersey City, New Jersey, with customers in insurance, natural resources, financial services, government, and risk management sectors. The company uses proprietary data sets and industry expertise to provide predictive analytics and decision support consultations in areas including fraud prevention, actuarial science, insurance coverage, fire protection, catastrophe and weather risk, and data management.
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is shorthand for an investing principle that prioritizes environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance. Investing with ESG considerations is sometimes referred to as responsible investing or, in more proactive cases, impact investing.
Women's World Banking is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to women's economic empowerment through financial inclusion.
Scale Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in Series A and Series B rounds. Scale has invested in over 380 Cloud, SaaS, and infrastructure companies over the past 20 years. Of these investments, 159 have resulted in exits, including IPOs for companies like Bill.com, Box, DocuSign, HubSpot, RingCentral, Root Insurance, and WalkMe.
RepRisk AG is an environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) data science company based in Zurich, Switzerland, specializing in ESG and business-conduct risk research, and quantitative solutions.
Altus Group Limited is a provider of asset and fund intelligence for commercial real estate. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada and employs approximately 2,800 employees with operations in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. It is a public company, with its shares listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol AIF, and Altus Group's market capitalization was around $2.7 billion as of the end of 2022. For fiscal 2022, the company had annual revenues of C$735 million and C$135 million in adjusted EBITDA.
Industry averages are generally using as benchmarks or tools which helps business to make comparisons that helps to determine its position within the industry and evaluate financial performance of the business. It is a useful tool for business managers and investors, helps with decision making process. It represent data figures of various business organizations across different industries of producing distinct products and services. Some individuals and organizations use industry averages as a useful tools, it gives a medium level of all other competitors performance. Compare their own data figure with those averages, it could help individual or organization to make decisions and predictions about possible outcomes. Such as, Investors compare an organization's financial ratios with industry averages to evaluate whether the organization have potential power to growth in the future, and level of risk for the investment. All those factors contribute to decision making and deeper analysis. Data required can be collect through survey or through several professional statistic websites, for individuals are more likely to obtain information using internet. Industry averages could also refer to terms related to industrial sector such as industry averages salaries, unemployment rates, Clickthrough rates and so on, using as benchmarks for comparisons.
CGAP is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that promotes financial inclusion. As an international public-private partnership, it is supported by more than 30 national and international development organisations and corporate foundations from the financial and IT sectors. Its stated aim is to improve the lives of the poor. CGAP stands for Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, which is rarely used in full form. CGAP aims to achieve its goal by analysing and promoting commercial business models that enable the financial, IT and telecommunications sectors to reach as many people as possible with digital financial services, especially the poor.
