Greater Scope – Regional Requirements for SME Growth

Anyone professionally involved with Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), government entities or multilateral organizations has probably heard the news that all innovation-ready SMEs now have access to a number of significant financial services that were previously only offered to major corporations.

Changing policy and progressive assessment criteria mean that the banks of today are turning an interested eye in the direction of exemplary SMEs. Any business wanting to take advantage of this change in financial access has to have both qualitative and quantitative information ready. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of their business and how these are turned into concrete financial numbers are what mark an exemplary business owner, and the most efficient and effect way these factors are presented is an SME credit rating.

Despite open government support, access to finance for many SMEs in emerging economies has been out of reach until very recently. But with a CreditBPO Rating, all that could change in an instant. According to an official of the World Bank, it’s time for a number of countries worldwide, such as the Philippines, to update their countrywide SME programs and policies to encourage the growth of many of their country’s SMEs. Following this trend, having all of a business’ vital information, both qualitative and quantitative, in a single platform alongside required business documentation would prove vital for adapting financial institutions looking to increase their support of potential SME borrowers.

There are a few pillars the World Bank Group Global espouses for this change in perspective:

1. Global Value Chains (GVCs) represent an ideal opportunity for properly equipped, innovation-ready SMEs. One scenario would be to partner with a big leading import/export firm to free up resources and increase capacity for the larger firm. The strength of SMEs is displayed in an unmatched ability to create specialized products and procedures to meet the standards set by a potential large partner.

2. Enabling SMEs to have representation in higher circles would reap dividends in creating ideal infrastructure support for industry-wide growth. Simple dialogue initiatives providing opinion and feedback is core here.

3. SMEs are usually more vulnerable to business-constraining policies than their larger peers. As such, support via government either by policy or outright subsidy is required.

Until just recently, the accepted practice among financial institutions has been to mainly assist SMEs with exceedingly high potential, but the World Bank has been rethinking that policy as being somewhat ineffective. Now, the opinion is that SME financing and support should be more readily available to a wider variety of SMEs via matching grants, lines of credit, private equity schemes and partial risk guarantees. In other words, lenders ought to have more flexible products available for tailoring to SMEs with different strengths and needs – reaching more businesses and better serving the customers they already have.

To this end, the full CreditBPO Rating Report platform can help emerging economies, SMEs, government agencies and multilateral organizations to achieve the necessary information infrastructure for a variety of initiatives; flexibility for technology transfers, accessibility for training, quantitative tools for R&D and ongoing support to name a few, possibly with the assistance of private sector and public financial institutions.

This is why it is so important for banking institutions to start ensuring credit access with interest rates that are either easily manageable or long-term to SMEs that are well-managed. And, going forward, that seems to be exactly what is going to happen. This improved access to finance could prove to be excellent news for the future of many SMEs, as well as a number of government and multilateral organizations.