EIF IN
POLAND
Investing in the future of Polish SMEs
Small and medium-size enterprises are the heart of the Polish economy.
Representing 99% of all businesses and more than two thirds of the workforce, Poland's 1,993,000 SMEs are responsible for driving innovation as well as spurring on growth, and their daily routine is what ensures the competitiveness of the Polish economy. But to do that, they often need finance.
At the same time, as the smallest actors in the economy, they are often the hardest hit when the economy encounters turbulence, which is why it is so crucial for them to have financial options in order to maintain and eventually grow their businesses.
At the EIF, our mission is to improve access to finance for small businesses across the EU. In Poland, we have been supporting SMEs using a broad range of instruments, including many tailored to the needs of the Polish market and designed with the Polish government and local authorities.
As a result, we've been able to support more than 108,000 Polish businesses, ranging from companies specialising in video game development, cybercrime prevention, and hardware and software solutions for monitoring the performance of industrial machinery, making sure they have the financial fuel they need to pursue their ambitions.
Our intention is to continue to extend this type of support to the Polish market, making access to finance easier as we collectively move towards a greener, digital and more inclusive Europe.
Success stories
Anshar Studios
Success stories
Anshar Studios
Video-game development is a fast-moving industry. “For a small independent studio like ours, inventiveness, passion, and creativity are crucial. It is the only way to stand out in a noisy flooded market where the number of releases is exploding,” says Grzegorz Dymek, COO of Anshar Studios.
Lukasz Hacura, CEO, founded Anshar in 2012 with a group of developers in Katowice, and the company itself develops complete video games from concept to launch using state of the art technology with photo-real visuals and an immersive experience.
“We are all passionate about game playing. In our view, this is the important part of building your advantage because being in it just for the money or just because it is popular is not the right approach,” says Grzegorz. Their passion is reflected in their offerings. Take the game “Gamedec,” a cyber-punk isometric role-playing-game four years in development and with 300,000 words of dialogue. “Throughout the game, the choices you make will define your experience. It’s a bit like our job: exciting but also challenging.”
Autenti
“Think of businesses in the financial sector or HR companies for example. They work long and hard to conclude deals, but that last step, the exchange of documents for the final, binding signature, could take days or even weeks—especially across borders. Even a few minutes could be the difference between making and breaking a deal. Signatures are simply too time-consuming,” explains Grzegorz Wójcik, CEO and founder of Autenti.
Autenti have developed software that enables signing contracts and documents of any type online, allowing companies to send out a request for a signature, collect signatures, and archive the documentation—all without registration and logins. “Rather than printing, signing, scanning and sending them—just do everything online. It’s so much faster.” Not to mention that this digitalisation is also environmentally friendly. And the key to this success? “The team. We would not have been able to get anywhere without our team. A great idea is worthless if you don’t have a strong team surrounding you to execute it.”
Nethone
“Cybercrime is growing exponentially; it’s a sign of the times. Banks and businesses have to be one-step ahead, and to be able to do that, they need to understand how their clients operate online,” says Hubert Rachwalski CEO of Warsaw-based Nethone, which was founded in 2016. “I have always loved dissecting data,” reflects Hubert “I used to study quantitative methods in economics and information systems, but now I am dedicating my energy to combating fraud and helping improve cybersecurity.”
The company is active in the B2B space, allowing its clients to better serve their customers and prevent online fraud. “We help our clients prevent, detect, and more precisely identify threats. We can profile every single user session, understanding how they access websites, extracting more than 5000 attributes from each session, and using machine-learning algorithms to identify anomalies.” The aim is to protect online businesses and provide them with recommendations to control transactions. “With the shift to electronic interaction, the importance of understanding the data and knowing your user is everything,” says Hubert.
Elmodis
“Many machines work outside of their optimal parameter range, which may increase the risk of breakdowns and the consumption of reactive power. This is detrimental to the grid and costly. Nowadays, the industry rarely has detailed enough data to make decisions to mitigate these risks. That’s where we come in.” explains Adam Komarnicki, Chief Operating Officer at Elmodis, a Polish company based in Krakow that offers an integrated hardware and software solution to monitor the performance of industrial machinery such as conveyor belts, cooling fans, pumps, and compressors.
The company’s diagnostics devices extract key machine condition and performance data based mainly on current and voltage measurements, analyse it, and then send to a cloud-based platform for further analysis. Clients receive immediate insights and risk notifications, allowing them to prevent malfunctions and optimise the operating or energy efficiency of the machinery. This patented technology can detect early signals leading to malfunctions, which enables clients to apply predictive maintenance and save precious time and money on repairs. “It is a sector in its infancy, and we see potential in Elmodis to become a major player in the market.”
Key figures
Over
of EIF financing
Transactions with financial intermediaries
Equity investments since inception
Guarantees support since inception
made available for
Polish businesses
Mandates in focus
The EIF continues to deploy capital in Poland under a wide range of strategic programmes and mandates. Below are brief summaries of our main initiatives in Poland.
InvestEU
The InvestEU programme provides the EU with crucial long-term funding by leveraging substantial private and public funds in support of a sustainable recovery. It is helping to mobilise private investments for the EU's policy priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the digital transition. The InvestEU Programme brings together under one roof the multitude of EU financial instruments previously available to support investment in the EU, making funding for investment projects in Europe simpler, more efficient and more flexible. The programme consists of three components: the InvestEU Fund, the InvestEU Advisory Hub and the InvestEU Portal. The InvestEU Fund is implemented through financial partners that will invest in projects using the EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion. The entire budget guarantee will back the investment projects of the implementing partners, increase their risk-bearing capacity and thus mobilise at least €372 billion in additional investment.
RCR
The EIB’s Risk Capital Resources (RCR) is the core pillar of the EIF’s equity activity. It has enabled us to pursue our equity strategy in the venture capital and growth segments for more than 25 years. In 2023, RCR accounted for 25% of our equity activity, committing €1.4bn to financial intermediaries.
EFSI
The European Fund for Strategic Investments formed part of the EU's Investment Plan for Europe, launched by the European Commission in 2015. EFSI addressed market gaps in financing - whether in infrastructure, research, energy efficiency or risk finance for SMEs – and mobilised private investment into these areas. Through EFSI the EIF deployed €10.5bn in resources of the European Commission, the EIB and the EIF to improve access to finance for SMEs and small midcaps.
EGF
The European Guarantee Fund was created by the EIB Group with contributions from Poland and other Member States to protect companies struggling in the crisis caused by COVID-19. With almost €25bn in guarantees, the EGF allowed the EIB and EIF to swiftly offer companies, mostly SMEs and mid-caps, access to loans, guarantees, asset-backed securities, capital and other financial instruments. The EGF forms part of the package of recovery measures put in place by the EU, with the objective of providing a total of €540bn to support the hardest hit sectors of the European economy.
REPowerEU
The EU launched REPowerEU in 2022 to reduce dependence on fossil-fuel imports and accelerate the green transition. To support the plan, in October 2022, the EIB Group developed a package of measures focussing on renewable energy, energy efficiency, electricity networks and on deepening its engagement in green innovation and breakthrough technologies. Under REPowerEU, the EIF will invest €4.5bn by 2027 through EIF equity products.
Polish Growth Fund of Funds
The Polish Growth Fund of Funds (PGFF) was a €90 million Fund-of-Fund initiative launched in 2013 by the EIF in close co-operation with Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) to stimulate equity investments into growth-focussed enterprises in Poland. Locally, the initiative is named Polski Fundusz-funduszy Wzrostu (PFFW). At the initial stage, PGFF combined a €30m commitment from the EIF with €60m from BGK.
ESIF-Silesia
The Silesia EIF fund-of-funds of €91m has been set up by the Silesia Voivodship to catalyze private investments and facilitate access to finance to SMEs in the Silesia Region in Poland. It is financed from the Regional Operational Programme for the Silesia Voivodship for the programming period 2014-2020 utilising European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) resources. As of June 2023, it has made more than PLN 584m available for more than 900 Polish businesses in the region.