Skye Bank plans increase in SMEs financing

BY MICHAEL EBOH & ONOZURE  DANIA
As parts of its contribution towards the development of the real sector of the economy, Skye Bank Plc has introduced a number of products and incentives designed to help Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) grow their businesses through access to finance and effective management of their financial resources.

Speaking during the launch of SkyeXcel products — Access and Liabilities — in Lagos, Mr. Kehinde Durosinmi_Etti, Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Skye Bank, noted that the bank’s decision to support SMEs is based on the realisation that these small businesses are the major drivers of any economy worldwide.

“We discovered that if we support the SMEs, the benefit to the nation is much more than you can get from supporting larger corporate organisations. This is because, the larger corporate organisation can have the technology and the size and all that to do great things, but what you find is that the SMEs are the ones that are able to generate employments opportunities that will take in people very quickly with little or no skills and turn them into entrepreneurs themselves,” he said.

Also speaking, Mrs. Ibiye Ekong, Divisional Head, Retail Banking, Skye Bank, assured that the SkyeXcel products are targeted at developing the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises’ sector in the country, in line with the efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in that regard.

“The bank,” she said, “Is focused on targeting this sector or segment of the economy, ensuring that we are very relevant in all that happens there. Even the CBN is supporting the sector, so we are on the right course. We hope that this translates in to a true business relationship with this group of customers and also to multiply its self all around because we are represented in all the states of the federation.”

The introduction of the products, according to Mrs. Arinola Kola-Daisi, Retail Group Head, Skye Bank, is driven by its desire to leverage on its vast number of customers within the SMEs’ bracket and also develop initiatives that will help boost the fortunes of the SMEs and the economy of the country in general.

She said, “Looking at what we have in Nigeria as a whole and Skye Bank, in particular, especially in terms of numbers, small business actually form 60 per cent of our customer base.

“We realise that there is a need for us to approach this sector or this segment in a uniform faction, so that what obtains in a small business in a particular sector of the economy in Lagos is what is obtained in Abuja and Port Harcourt and also ensure that we are able to streamline the services across the length and breadth of the economy.

“In doing this, we looked at what quick success factors are for this categories of business, and we discovered that it is mainly the ability to access finance to run your business, while another factor is the ability to minimise financial charges in the course of doing business.

“This made us to develop two arms of our SkyeXcel product. We have the Liability product which is a regular current account, with a minimum opening balance of N150,000, which we know is well within the reach of most categories of companies in this sector. Companies that we classify as small business are those that probably run up to about N200 million, in their revenues and their turnover in a year.

“The second arm of the SkyeXcel product is the access product, whereby, you can have access to finances to meet your needs. This may be overdraft facilities, working capital.

This may just be regular facilities, with adequate security. We also have invoice financing security. We have a whole lot of customers and people in the Nigerian bankable corporate that act as either contractors or help us to organise well-structured company.

“What we offer is an opportunity for them, we finance the works that they do for these companies. That is what invoice financing is about. We believe that if we are able to this, we would be able to serve the people and customers in this categories that we have and we would also be able to attract others that are not yet in this business.