Embedded Finance – Seeding a Digital Community of SMEs and bringing Banking to where the SMEs are

 

At the SME Finance Forum, we strongly believe that each and every member institution has a wealth of unique experiences in serving their MSME clients. Therefore, we introduce a new initiative, the Member Spotlight, to provide our member institutions a stage on which to share knowledge and experience, as well as specific products and services they consider relevant and useful for the global community of SME financiers. 

 

The first edition of this new initiative is with member GlobalLinker.

 

GlobalLinker is an AI Powered Digital Ecosystem offering SMEs a range of services to build digital presence including e-commerce enablement; network & collaborate; have up-to-date knowledge; and access a range of offers & deals pre-negotiated for them. GlobalLinker is co-branded by leading banks and offered to SMEs by them as a value-added benefit contributing to the SME growth and thereby creating a single large community of SMEs across the world. Through the platform, the bank can increase SME reach; access data & gain Insights; embed & deliver relevant products & services to SMEs digitally. GlobalLinker has already co-branded its platform with leading institutions like HSBC, MasterCard, ICICI Bank, Union Bank of Philippines, Siam Commercial Bank and have over 350k SMEs from over 150 countries who have made more than 1.2 million business connections, opened >10k e-stores, listed >200k products and conducted over 100k transactions.

 

Embedded Finance – Seeding a Digital Community of SMEs and bringing Banking to where the SMEs are

A conversation with Amit Dave of ICICI Bank and Jaypee Soliman from UBP. Both ICICI Bank and Union Bank of Philippines have a co-branded program with GlobalLinker running over a couple of years with a sizeable SME community on the platform. GlobalLinker’s program with the Union Bank of Philippines contributed to the bank winning a number of accolades in 2020 including one of the most helpful banks in Asia during Covid-19. Similarly, ICICI Bank in India recently recognized GlobalLinker as core part of its growth strategy for business banking during its investor day in December 2020.

 

In this conversation with these two lead advocates of their respective programs with GlobalLinker, you will listen to some thought-provoking discussions on:

• Can banks play a bigger role in digitizing SMEs contributing to the growth of SMEs; seeding a fertile community of SMEs to offer its services?

• Is Beyond Banking a truly SME centric model? Is it often seen as CSR activity? How to make it commercially viable?

• Can banks embed financial products contextually as and when SMEs need it; What are the challenges, and does it limit the ability to build profitable relationships with SMEs?

• How banks can play a bigger role in bringing government and private sector partnerships to create an ecosystem for SMEs to grow?

 

Moderator

Satyam Agrawal is the President ASEAN & Global Head of Financial Services at GlobalLinker. GlobalLinker is an AI powered platform ‘Building a Global Community of Digitized SMEs’ with a growing community of over 300,000 SMEs from over 150 countries. Satyam’s role at GlobalLinker is to partner with leading Banks and Corporations to transform the way SMEs are served. He is also responsible for enabling financial services to be offered to SMEs on the Platform in a contextual and personalized way. In his prior role as Managing Director and Head of Retail Business Banking for Asia Pacific at HSBC, Satyam was responsible for delivering the growth ambitions of HSBC in this segment. Satyam set up four new markets including China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia hiring over 400 people. Satyam delivered key digital proposition including Digital Lending, Partnership with a leading E-Commerce Platform and the ‘Fusion’ Brand which won HSBC the EuroMoney award for the Best SME bank for 2019. Prior to HSBC, Satyam was the Global Head of Products for Retail Assets and Business Banking at Standard Chartered Bank overseeing 20 Countries. 

 

Speakers

Jaypee Soliman is the Vice president and SME Segment Head for Customer Experience. Jaypee currently leads the group that drives Union Bank’s various innovations on technological banking products, solutions, and services for the MSME market. Jaypee started his career with Union Bank in 2008 and has held positions in Transaction Banking Cash Management, Customer Segment Management to leading SME Platforms before taking up his current role in Nov 2020. He graduated with a degree on Behavioral Sciences majoring in Organizational Development, and also completed Academic units for master’s degree in industrial psychology. Prior to Union Bank he has also been connected with International Financial institutions for 2 years and had a 3-year stint in Advertising. He has participated in a number of business and technology forums as a key resource speaker and subject matter expert evangelizing the importance of choosing the right, reputable partners in growing one’s business over the course of the past 6+ years.

 

Amit Dave is the Product Head for Current Accounts with ICICI Bank. Amit has 20 years of experience in Retail Banking. During this tenure Amit has handled multiple roles like Product Management, Branch Banking as well as Sales across various customer segments like Savings Account, NRI banking, Investment Services and Business Banking. Amit has completed his graduation in Chemical Engineering and subsequently completed his post-graduation in Management from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.