On 2nd July 1997, a new company was born in Uganda – FRIENDS Consult Ltd (FCL). With operations scanty and unknown to many, FCL started doing bankable feasibility studies to a few clients. With the future unknown, FCL went into developing business plans for companies. As the years went by, FCL diversified into offering more than just feasibility studies and business plans and started providing microfinance capacity building and related technical.
For a fairly, FCL was known as a “microfinance consultancy firm” because of the many breakthrough consultancy undertakings the firm did in this subsector. FCL developed a reputation as a go-to consultancy firm in financial inclusion or pro-poor finance both nationally and internationally. Meanwhile, the firm also established consultancy excellence in selected areas of corporate business development, MSME development, program/ project design and the mainstream banking sector.
Over the years, through the consultancy services provided, FCL has helped many companies, development partners, sector associations, governments and not-for-profit organizations to tremendously improve effectiveness, efficiency, profitability, sustainability and overall performance.
25 years down the road, FCL now provides consultancy solutions in a variety of areas including microfinance/rural finance; banking, corporate business, economic/social development and MSME development among others.
Looking forward, we see ourselves working with and not for clients, providing solutions and not just reports, and providing increased utility for more competitive prices to all our clients. We see a future where the fast pace of mega change calls on our depth and speed of action to keep our client, and us with them, at the front end of the waves.