SMEs remain a major facet for UOB Bank
KUCHING: With small-medium enterprises (SMEs) making up 97 per cent of business in Malaysia while providing close to 4 million employment opportunities, United Overseas Bank ( Malaysia) Bhd’s ( UOB Bank) next goal is to support this cornerstone through comprehensive and innovative solutioning.
According to UOB Malaysia’s executive director and business banking country head Raymond Chui, supporting local SMEs should be something that all banks need to continue doing as the industry has consistently taken the lead in terms of contribution to our GDP – indicating its importance to our economy.
“We decided that the best way to support this industry is by developing a solution rather than just a product.
“At UOB, we pride ourselves on understanding our product, so we developed a product from the customers’ point of view ( POV) on what solution they needed to grow their businesses.
“We did this through focus group studies with our customers to help us better gauge what their environment, needs and requirements for growth are, and how we the bank can come in and support them.”
“Based on their feedback, we were able to develop our products that are more than just financial products, they are solutions that help solve the pain points of our customers,” Chui said in an exclusive interview with The Borneo Post.
He guided that the current set of business products that UOB offers would encompass the entire life cycle of SMEs to ensure that their customers would be well taken care of, from their start-up phase to maturity.
Young start-ups are the SMEs who have been registered less than three years, maturing SMEs are between three to five years in operation and mature SMEs are those who have been operating for more than five years.
“Young start-ups are the ones that most banks do not have any interest in seeing because they do not have a proven track record yet, but at UOB we are able to provide them with a current account (CA) proposition called BizCA+ that provides them with a range of benefits.
“With a BizCA+ account, our customers are able to leverage off generous interest rates of up to. 2.8 per cent and unlimited foreign and local telegraphic transfers to help them with potential payments or orders in their business dealings,” said Chui.
While these young start-ups may not be able to meet UOB’s requirements for loans at this juncture, Chui guided that the bank has in turn collaborated with the funding society in Malaysia to help their growing customers obtain alternative funding by recommending them as incubators where they can obtain basic requirements for their start-up and working capital requirements.
“Once they grown and matured, they have the choice to actually come back to us for more funding support as we understanding that they will likely be in phase of wanting to buy their properties for their business operation.”
At the maturing stage, UOB will come in to help customers with their property asset acquisition through the bank’s Bizproperty scheme.