Welcome to our latest blog post where we delve into the fascinating world of SME banking. During our latest webinar on November 25, we invited Paolo...
This blog is brought to you by UPLINQ, a Member of the SME Finance Forum. The first part of that blog series is available here. -------------- In the...
The SME Finance Forum team and I would like to wish you a happy new year! At the outset, I would like to acknowledge how proud we are to have all of...
Welcome to our latest blog post where we delve into the fascinating world of SME banking. During our latest webinar on November 25, we invited Paolo...
This blog is brought to you by UPLINQ, a Member of the SME Finance Forum. The first part of that blog series is available here. -------------- In the...
The SME Finance Forum team and I would like to wish you a happy new year! At the outset, I would like to acknowledge how proud we are to have all of...
Featuring Global SME Finance Awards Platinum Winners G ain I nsights from Three Awardees and G et R eady to A pply fo r the 2025 Awards ***************** The Global SME Finance Awards Since its launch in 2018, t he Awards recognize and celebrate the outstanding achievements of financial service providers in delivering exceptional products and...
Welcome to our latest blog post where we delve into the fascinating world of SME banking. During our latest webinar on November 25, we invited Paolo Sironi to share some of the key findings from IBM's Institute for Business Value (IBV)’s recent study, which features contributions from the SME Finance Forum. Together with four banking executives...
This blog is brought to you by UPLINQ, a Member of the SME Finance Forum. The first part of that blog series is available here. -------------- In the first article of this series, we talked about the challenges faced by banks and lenders in providing financing to SMEs and enumerated the potential solution areas. In this second article, we are...
The SME Finance Forum team and I would like to wish you a happy new year! At the outset, I would like to acknowledge how proud we are to have all of you as members and partners. We thank you for your valuable efforts in scaling SME finance within your own institutions and partnering with the SME Finance Forum. As the headline implies, we are...
Summary of the webinar discussion “Sustainability in Supply Chain Finance – Need, Challenges and Opportunities.” October 25, 8 AM – 9:30 AM EDT Panelists: Host: Qamar Saleem, CEO of the SME Finance Forum; Moderator: Rajesh Mehra, Practice Lead for Trade & Supply Chain Finance, Financial Institutions Group covering the Asia-Pacific region at...
Access to finance is a significant challenge for MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises) in India like other emerging and developing economies. Despite the Indian central banks policies and guidelines requiring banks to allocate a portion of their credit for the priority sector, which includes MSMEs, information asymmetry and lack of risk...
For some time, the SME Finance Forum has demonstrated how state-of-the-art SME financing must go beyond credit and use digital technology to enhance customer experience. It’s becoming evident that today’s SMEs expect even more—they expect that their access to finance, markets and management support/skills building can all come in one space, in a...
Introduction The ecosystem of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) has been recognized as a critical driver of economic growth and development in many countries worldwide. These enterprises play a crucial role in creating employment opportunities, generating income, reducing poverty, and improving the standard of living for people globally...
Summary of our webinar on Data and AI driving diversity in SME Lending . A recording of the session is available here . A deck is available for Members of the SME Finance Forum on our Member Portal On April 19, 2023 the SME Finance Forum and Uplinq co-hosted a webinar on the topic of Data and AI driving diversity in SME lending. This topic...
On March 22-23, 2023, the SME Finance Forum successfully organized an immersion program in Singapore to DBS and Tyme, both members of the Forum. 39 senior executives from 19 financial institutions and 15 countries attended the event. The presentations shown during the immersion program are visible to Members of the SME Finance Forum who are logged...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - 2023 March Session - LEADING DFIs A recording of the session is available here: https://vimeo.com/804283237 Presentations are available for Members of the SME Finance Forum on our Member Portal The “SME Finance Virtual Marketplace” is an online match-making platform that promotes partnership and...
In December 2022, we launched our 11th pulse survey. We received responses from 119 member institutions operating in 194 economies. Among the respondents, 81 are lenders and 38 are non-lenders. Level of Operation The feedback from member institutions continues to be positive. 46 percent of respondents say their level of operation has already...
In a wide-ranging interview, Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion , spoke to how the world can emerge from the pandemic to build a more inclusive, resilient global society through the transformative power of innovation. “The innovation we're seeing worldwide is allowing us to consider and find new ways of financing small and medium...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – January Live Session . On January 11th, the SME Finance Forum Marketplace session gathered four fintechs, offering services ranging from growth partnerships and mobile money float financing to ‘trust’ scoring and trade financing support. Building a Trust-Driven SME Lending Ecosystem DigiAlly,...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – December Live Session . The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs to help connect its members with different technologies and partnership opportunities. Our virtual marketplace is a unique online match-making platform promoting partnership and...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – November Live Session . The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintech, helping connect members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual marketplace is a...
At the Global SME Finance Forum 2022 Harnessing Digitalization for Sustainable and Inclusive SME Finance, more than 350 leaders and senior executives from 60 countries and over 180 banks, Fintechs and regulatory agencies gathered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Co-hosted by the National Bank of Cambodia and the SME Finance Forum, top-tier experts...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – October Live Session . The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs to help connect its members with different technologies and partnership opportunities. The monthly virtual marketplace is a unique online match-making platform promoting partnership and...
The SME Finance Forum hosted this event featuring three Asian-Pacific banking associations to explore ways for digitalization to unlock the potential of supply chain finance (SCF) and bring meaningful changes in its access to and availability for SMEs. In this online session, Dr. Matthew Gamser ( SME Finance Forum ), and Matthew Saal (...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - August Live Session The SME Finance Forum since its inception in 2015 has been featuring innovative fintech, helping connect members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi)
Gender Finance
Aug 04, 2022
Access to finance has always been a significant constraint for women entrepreneurs, hindering their growth prospects. Lack of sex-disaggregated data has made it difficult to close the $1.7 trillion gap in financing faced globally by over 400 million women-owned businesses. A GPFI Workshop on “New Approaches to Closing Finance & Data Gaps for...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - July Live Session The SME Finance Forum since its inception in 2015 has been featuring innovative fintech, helping connect members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
Just six years ago, more than half of SME retailers’ transactions were paper based – in the form of cash or cheques. That world is long gone. Why? A large part is because Covid-19 gave digital payments a huge boost. The pandemic made many physical transactions impossible over a significant period, and made digital alternative payments, whether by...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – May Live Session The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping to connect its members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
This blog is a summary of our “SME Lending & Social Impact in India” webinar with U GRO Capital. Small businesses in India employ over 100 million people or 40% of India’s workforce and account for 29% of India’s GDP and 49% of its exports [1] . The current SME finance gap in the Indian context amounts to $221 billion or 10% of the country’s...
Summary of the SME Finance Virtual Marketplace – June Live Session The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping to connect its members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session. The SME virtual...
Summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - Seventh Session with Fintechs The SME Finance Forum since its inception in 2015 has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping connecting members to different technologies and opportunities. Through our virtual marketplace, we offer in particular a monthly pitch session. On February 16th, the seventh...
In March 2022, we launched our 10th pulse survey with more targeted questions to understand how our members and their SME clients are adjusting to the new normal. We received responses from 118 member institutions operating in 181 economies. Among the respondents, 83 are lenders and 35 are non-lenders. Level of Operation The overall story here is...
If the unofficial theme of last year’s MENA Credit Guarantee Conference was how to move past the Covid emergency, this year it was about preparing for what comes next. Adulrahman Hesham al-Suwaidi, CEO of Qatar Development Bank (this year’s co-host) set the tone in his opening remarks, encouraging speakers to look ahead at how guarantee...
This blog is the summary of the virtual marketplace from March 9th, the SME Finance Forum hosted this event featuring three fintech and one DFI (Development Finance Institution) to share their experiences and different products and services in SME Finance. In this online session, Robert Scheunpflug ( Shanghai F-Road Commercial Services Co. Ltd ),...
This blog is a summary of the G20 Workshop on Digital and Innovative Financial Products and Services for MSMEs Beyond Credit . G20 countries’ Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) organized the virtual workshop with the Indonesia G20 Presidency on March 2, 2022. More than 500 industry leaders participated in the event and joined the...
A summary of the open webinar on “Beyond Funding, What Do Women Need to Advance Their Businesses?” SME Finance Forum and Women’s World Banking’s hosted panel explores how financial service providers can leverage business support services to empower women-led businesses with the skills, networks, and resources needed to reach their growth potential...
A summary of SME Finance Virtual Marketplace - Fifth Session - Fintechs The SME Finance Forum has been featuring a series of fintech, connecting members to different techonologies and opportunities. Particularly on November 11th, the fifth SME Finance Forum Marketplace session gathered six fintech companies offering services from e-lending, public...
A virtual marketplace summary . On January 12 th , the Forum hosted a virtual marketplace featuring six leading investors in the industry to share their experience in SME finance. In this online session, Elizabeth Davrishashvili ( FINCA Impact Finance ), Luz Leyva ( REGMIFA ), Chris Wehbé ( Lendable ), Edmund Higenbottam ( Verdant Capital ),...
Dear Members, Partners, and Friends, As 2021 draws to an end, let me take this opportunity to thank you for your continued engagement and supports. 2021 has undoubtedly been another challenging year for all of us, including the MSMEs which we are trying to serve. We are proud that so many of our members reported, in our surveys and check-in calls...
Credit scoring has the potential to improve access to capital and financial inclusion around the world. As financial institutions begin to have access to different types of data, the variety of credit scoring mechanisms have increased. One way that financial institutions have kept track of these alternative data and found ways to understand them...
This is a summary of the Sneak Preview of the World Development Report 2022: Finance for an Equitable Recovery. On September 30th, WDR Director Leora Klapper and Lead Author Martin Holtmann made a special advance presentation, hosted by Matthew Gamser, CEO of the SME Finance Forum, sharing findings of the upcoming 2022 World Development Report (...
In February 2021, we launched our revised pulse survey, to be run quarterly, with more targeted questions to understand how our members, and by proxy how their SME clients, are faring. We had 71 respondents working in 143 countries, out of which 47 are lenders working in a little over 100 countries. Our second round of surveys this year, during...
Este blog es un resumen del evento En Foco con AB Bank Zambia . La digitalización se ha convertido en la principal tendencia de los servicios financieros para las PYMES desde que comenzó la pandemia de COVID-19. La tecnología apoya a las instituciones financieras a brindar servicios de forma más accesible a más personas en la base de la pirámide,...
This is a member spotlight summary. While entrepreneurs in the informal sector contribute an average of 60% to the GDP of West African countries, less than 15% of those entrepreneurs have access to banks as a source of financing. Significant progress has been achieved by fintech companies who are working with banks and e-money operators in the...
