Hipotecaria-Pan

completed

The green field project supports the mortgage-lending activities of La Hipotecaria (“LH” or the company), the only specialized full-service housing finance company in Panama and El Salvador. The company controls over 10% of the residential mortgage market in Panama and a negligible amount in El Salvador where LH began operations in November of 2003. The company specializes in originating and servicing residential mortgages to individuals mostly in the low to middle income segment of the market. In order to free up its balance sheet to continue expanding its lending activities, the company has developed a successful business of originating and securitizing mortgages in Panama. Over the past five years, the company has issued four separate mortgage-backed securities (“MBS”), amounting to over $45 million and holds on balance sheet a mortgage loan portfolio of $29 million as of March 31, 2004. LH now wants to use the same formula to expand into El Salvador, targeting its lending activities towards the low to middle income segment of the market and eventually selling the mortgages to investors in El Salvador and Panama via an MBS issue. The primary purpose of the IFC facility is to: - support LH’s existing mortgage finance operations in Panama, - assist the company expand its operations into El Salvador, and - enable the company put in place a viable structure to facilitate its planned MBS issues in El Salvador.