RCBC
Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) has been honing its small and medium-sized enterprise operations for years, creating tailored services that cater to all types of SMEs, whatever their size, industry, and ambition. Rizal Microbank meets the needs of micro-sized SMEs, which are estimated to comprise 99.6% of all registered onshore businesses, while its eWMN Programme champions female-owned corporates, offering loans, business education and training, as well as organising networking forums and seminars.
At the other end of the spectrum is the commercial and SME (CSME) team, which caters to larger companies. RCBC recently opened a CSME satellite office in the southern city of Butuan; two more are set to open later this year.
Everything circles back to the Makati-based lender’s financial inclusion programme, which focuses on reaching customers in the far-flung islands and provinces, and which is aligned with the Philippine Development Plan, a five-year project to boost economic growth, combat climate change and cut energy bills.
RCBC reckons its financial inclusion programme was responsible for a 22% year-on-year increase in the bank’s overall CSME loan portfolio in 2017; the sector-wide expansion over the same period was just 10.6%. And the bank is just getting started. In the middle of 2017, it unveiled a new SME business portal, a digital platform dedicated to the needs of smaller enterprises.
It also launched its small business loan initiative, a credit scoring system that simplifies the processes of bringing new customers on board and account handling, and identifies and makes contact with business owners with potential and ambition, but no access to formal bank funding.