Plantersbank has 40 years of experience in development banking and marketing financial services to SMEs in the Philippines. We stayed competitive because of our ability to understand and be flexible to the SMEs needs. This meant that we had to offer, both informally and formally, advisory services that were both financial and non-financial. Moving forward, we have recognized that our maverick, entrepreneurial spirit has led us to have to innovate to stay competitive. We believe offering IT services is the evolution of a community-based banking culture. We are after all intermediaries. Financial will go hand in hand with scaling-up thru IT, and the spirit of development banking as a tool for alleviating poverty will be realized with our Developmental IT program.

This presentation was given during a conference jointly organized by The Arab Monetary Fund and IFC on “Building a High Performance Small Medium Enterprise Business in the Arab World” on 7-8 May 2013 in Dubai, UAE.