SME Banking Strategy Development

SME BANKING STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

The client is a Nigerian bank aspiring to become Africa’s leading SME bank. Although the bank recognises the huge potential of the SME sector and SME banking, they are faced with a number of challenges when developing a SME banking strategy, which necessitated our involvement in the development of a SME banking strategy for the bank.

Project Responsibilities:

• We worked as part of an overall engagement with a big 4 accounting firm, with the sole mandate of assisting the MD and the board in developing a SME banking strategy;
• We conducted research to quantify the SME banking potentials, current status of supply of SME banking (including conducting mystery shopping of rival banks on their specific SME offerings) to identify potential gaps in the market;
• Through extensive workshops with top management, detailed strategy recommendations were then made following an assessment of the bank’s current SME banking capabilities. We developed specific recommendations on an overall SME banking business model, customer segmentation, product and channel strategies as well as important enablers such as credit risk management, technology, customer service standards and organisational setup. We also created an implementation plan which included time-bound strategic work streams and performance milestones; and
• A financial model underpinning the strategy recommendations was also developed which incorporated operational KPIs.