Austria wirtschaftsservice (aws) is Austria’s national promotional bank. aws was created in 2002 with the merger of four existing organizations – the BÜRGES promotional bank for SMEs (1954), the Finance Guarantee Company (1969), the Innovation Agency (1984) and the erp fund (1962). It offers a broad range of company-specific investment promotion programmes and services. aws offers financial assistance and consultancy for companies, from the pre-seed phase up to the expansion stage.