Supporting SMEs through a variety of initiatives
WITH the Government declaring 2017 as the Start-up and SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) Promotion Year to drive the country’s economic growth, AmBank has rolled out numerous initiatives to support the SME business in hopes to achieve a strong double-digit growth.
AmBank Group chief executive office Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir shared that the company has built a clear segmentation for SME business to enable them to effectively assign different lending programmes to different segments.
For example, the company has worked with reputable partners such as Credit Guarantee Corporation to offer smaller SMEs smaller facilities.
For bigger SMEs, it has launched the Enterprise Lending, Industrial Hire Purchase and Business Premise Programme, which cater for 70% to 80% of the needs of SMEs.
On top of that, AmBank has also enhanced its loan/financing and cash management products to cater to market needs, and improved its loan processing infrastructure to expedite delivery of loan offerings to the SMEs.
“Having said that, banking facilities is just one of the components for SMEs to be successful.”
“They need to ensure effective production, collection, staffing, branding and many other factors. Therefore, we will roll out more learning series and form a focus group for SMEs to come together to share their challenges and discuss solutions. From the banking perspective, we have gathered lots of industry data on common pitfalls faced by the SMEs and would like to share with them on how to avoid such derailment.
“In a nutshell, our SME goals in 2017 was to build our fundamentals and help SMEs to be successful in achieving their goals,” Sulaiman said.
AmBank’s collaboration with SOBA in 2017 was very synergistic as the award’s core objectives fit well with the company’s aspirations to help businesses in Malaysia grow.
“As we partner with the SMEs, we hope to be their preferred bank, to build long-term relationships and win together,” he said.
SOBA was developed as an annual premier business award with the aim of recognising the roles and contributions of outstanding SME businesses towards the nation and economy and to help spread best practices among the business.
As such, Sulaiman believes that it will not only help the SMEs to have better access to best practices and to learn the business’ key success factors but also to further motivate and inspire home-grown SMEs to aim for excellence in their products and services and to promote Malaysia to the world.
“With SOBA grooming, featuring and acknowledging successful entrepreneurs, in return, these people can play their parts in mentoring and coaching other entrepreneurs in moving up the ladder,” he added.
Sulaiman hoped that through their partnership with SOBA, AmBank will be able to engage and reach out to more SMEs nationwide to uplift their standards and competitiveness so that they can be successful and eventually expand their business regionally and globally.