Edoardo Cavallo, associate at FACS, presented to industry leaders at the 10th Asia Sustainable Oil Palm Summit in Bali. His presentation focused on the existing innovative financing models for oil palm smallholders and what it takes to scale them up. Three main partnership models were presented:

• Guaranteed Partnership Lending: Most commonly observed in practice and rooted in the plasma-nucleus scheme whereby farmers receive financing in exchange of long-term delivery commitments. The key limitation is dependence on the full corporate guarantee from the nucleus company which limits the scale-up potential
• Distributed Risk Partnership Lending: This approach relies on a blended finance element, with foreign banks and development finance institutions providing de-risking mechanism. To date, this approach still needs a corporate guarantee under most examples, limiting its applicability.
• Full Startup Funding from Impact Investors followed by Loan Sale or Refinancing. Impact investors would channel funds to a local bank and take all credit risk for the replanting phase while the bank only takes counter party risk on the investor. (Impact) investors sells loan to bank after successful replanting.