Small- and medium-sized enterprises in the UAE find the process of getting bank funding a hard one, and therefore prefer to fund their business operations out of their own pockets, according to the findings of a new survey from Souqalmal.com.

A survey of SMEs carried out by the personal finance website – which has recently begun to offer price comparisons for SME banking products – found that just 28 per cent of respondents had taken out business loans and financing from a bank.