How banks can combat the challenges faced in their SMEs lending business

whitePaper | August 24, 2023

The financial services industry faces multiple challenges: the ongoing threat of a recession, the increasing risk of cyber attacks, and growing regulatory pressure. Customers will no longer accept anything less than a convenient and personalised experience. Together these pressures seem daunting for the financial services world.

whitePaper | October 26, 2022

BaaS is reshaping how banks are looking at distributing their products and services. In the simplest fashion, it can be understood as the partnership model between banks and non-bank businesses and/or fintechs where the latter embeds the financial service into its core offering.

whitePaper | July 26, 2022

For a very long time, incumbent banks/financial institutions have remained the pillars or stalwarts of the banking industry. Be it a retail consumer or a business, banks have remained a one-stop solution for all their financial needs. However, financial institutions have had their fair share of challenges in the past decade, which have ultimately trickled down towards the end consumer and revolutionized banking as we know it.

whitePaper | April 14, 2022

Gone are the days when customers would visit brick and mortar stores 3-5 times a week to complete their daily chores, buy luxury items or do banking. With the proliferation of mobile technology, social media, and internet banking, customer expectations shifted and evolved. Moreover, with the rise of on-demand and one-click mindset, induced by the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Uber, along with the need for hyper-personalisation, people were no longer willing to wait and watch for any of the businesses, and the case of financial services was no different. It is needless to mention that customer expectations and digital transformation have been evolving in parallel ever since.

whitePaper | November 14, 2019

Municipal bond funds experienced strong flows in 2019, as tailwinds from the country’s new tax code (the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “TCJA”) and low interest rates found investors flocking to the asset class for the tax benefit. Add in strong year-to-date performance, and investors may be asking if they missed the boat and if it’s too late to invest in municipal bonds. Yet, there are clear and distinct reasons why municipal bonds are still an attractive investment for investors today.

whitePaper | November 5, 2019

Trade finance in its simplest form is when an exporter requires an importer to prepay for goods shipped. This gives the importer two main challenges. The first is that prepaying for goods from places such as China or India, for example, will seriously impact the company’s cash flow due to the long shipping times involved. The second challenge is how does the importer reduce the risks of paying for goods in advance? These two challenges are mainly resolved by the importer’s bank or independent trade finance provider providing a letter of credit to the exporter, or the exporter’s bank, guaranteeing payment upon presentation of certain documents. These documents may include a bill of lading.