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BANKING

World’s Best
SME Banks
2024—Regional
Winners
DECEMBER 1, 2023

Authors: Andrea Murad, Simon Littlewood, John Njiraini, Rob Daly

Africa: Ecobank
Lack of access to Dnance has typically been the key
challenge facing African SMEs. However, limited

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access to markets is emerging as a much bigger

problem.

For a majority, operations are constrained in their

home markets. Due to factors like diMerent
regulatory frameworks, tariM and nontariM barriers
and multiple taxation regimes, among others, only
some venture beyond their borders.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)

promises to be a game changer for SMEs. The
agreement is expected to increase intra-African
exports by more than 80%.

Ecobank, the winner as Best SME Bank in Africa, is positioning itself as the ideal partner for
SMEs to exploit AfCFTA opportunities through access to new markets, negotiation of logistical
hurdles and scaling of operations. The bank’s Pan-African footprint makes it a natural Dt for
intra-African trade.

This year, Ecobank has launched the Single Market Trade Hub. “The hub will help SMEs access
new markets,” says Carol Oyedeji, Ecobank’s acting group executive for Commercial Banking.

She adds that besides being an information repository about AfCFTA, the hub is a
marketplace for businesses oMering access to a full range of Dnancial products and solutions
such as trade Dnance, cash management, working capital and advisory.

The hub and the bank’s RapidCollect regional collection oMering eliminate obstacles to cross-
border operations. In 2022, when it was launched, RapidCollect achieved transaction volumes
amounting to $431 million in its Drst year.

These interventions and oMerings put the bank that operates across 33 markets at the heart
of SMEs’ success in Africa. —John Njiraini

Asia-Paci!c: OCBC
Singapore-headquartered Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) has won accolades
as 2024’s Best SME Bank in the Asia-PaciDc region for its creative and enthusiastic support of

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SME clients during torrid times and for impressive digital innovation.

The bank works with 130,000 SMEs in Singapore

alone—an estimated 50% of all SMEs.

OCBC also has been successful in accelerating

sustainability eMorts—achieving carbon neutrality
on operations during 2022, with $10 billion in new
sustainable Dnance investment in energy-edcient
technology across Singapore, Malaysia and Greater
China as part of an industry-leading target of $50
billion by 2025.

The bank scored very highly on its aggressive

digitization of core operations with an investment
of $250 million as the Drst part of the “digital core
roadmap,” refreshing key channel systems across
markets to enable faster rollout of digital features. These include client personalization
capabilities driven by innovative artiDcial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

Personal portfolios in Southeast Asia are far more likely to include nonfungible tokens (NFTs)
than in Europe or the US, mainly due to the young demographic of the newly wealthy. In the
fast-growing world of digital assets, and in conjunction with the bank’s 90th anniversary,
OCBC minted its Drst NFT for staM in late 2022 on the bank’s in-house blockchain platform.
This was given to staM to commemorate the special occasion.

The bank increased total income by $11.7 billion in 2022 and grew shareholder returns by an
eye-watering 18% during this torrid period—a nearly 60% increase in 2020. —Simon
Littlewood

Caribbean: Banreservas
Banreservas, in operation since 1941, strives to serve the SME segment and won this year’s
Best SME Bank in the Caribbean. It has a 23% share of the SME market, which represents 14%
of the bank’s total business—contributing $1.23 billion to the bank’s $8.54 billion portfolio.
From April 2022 to March 2023, the bank issued 21,091 loans to 15,066 SMEs, totaling $648.5
million.

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SigniDcant SME programs include Fomenta Pymes Banreservas and suboMerings such as
Programa Preserva, Programa Coopera and Programa Prospera.

Fomenta Pymes (“Promotes SMEs”) is a comprehensive suite of Dnancial oMerings designed to

meet SMEs’ growth needs. It provides Dnancing facilities, credit cards and free management
and payroll services. It also sponsors programs to promote Dnancial education,
entrepreneurship and economic development.

Programa Preserva promotes a savings culture for sustainable economic well-being,

providing Dnancial education workshops. Programa Coopera promotes social projects to
produce goods and services in economically vulnerable communities. During 2022, this
program assisted 457 groups in starting business co-ops. Programa Prospera works to
provide technical advice, Dnancial services, and risk management to organizations that strive
to facilitate new business development. —Laura Spinale

Central America: BAC Credomatic

Headquartered in Costa Rica, BAC Credomatic brings SME services throughout Central
America, including Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama. Founded in 1952, the bank
now serves 4.2 million clients, 1.9 million of whom use the company’s digital banking
platform. Its SME client base consists of about 260,000 businesses. Its digital oMerings include
payroll services, supplier payment services, tax help, exporting help and international
payment capabilities.

Financing for SMEs runs from standard business loans to more-speciDc oMerings. The bank
also provides development Dnancing for technically and Dnancially viable business projects.
— LS

Central and Eastern Europe: ČSOB

The winner as Best SME Bank in Central and Eastern Europe is Československá obchodní
banka (ČSOB), which has successfully grown its SME portfolio and customer base despite the
high interest-rate environment. The bank has about 140,000 SME clients, and SME loans
compose about 11% of its portfolio. Customer growth resulted partly from the bank’s new
digital onboarding services, a vital part of the customer-centric business model.

ČSOB has focused on developing deep relationships with SMEs and broad product portfolios

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while becoming a leader in sustainability practices. The bank’s portfolio of digitized products
includes solutions for lending, banking, Dnancial markets and trade Dnance that SMEs can
access through various apps.

The bank also strongly focuses on digitization and has created a virtual branch in its mobile
app to help SMEs easily access its products and services. With the bank’s digitization eMort,
SMEs can use data for peer benchmarking, market analysis and industrial insights.

In 2020, ČSOB introduced a digital assistant, “Kate,” which uses artiDcial intelligence (AI) and
data to help SMEs self-service in the bank’s digital channels so customers can better address
their needs. More than 90% of customers are eligible to use the digital branch. ČSOB has
recently introduced functionality that calculates and oMsets an SME’s carbon footprint.

To help SMEs transition toward sustainability, ČSOB partnered with Green0meter, an

environmental, social and governance (ESG) data platform that assists in reporting. This
partnership will help SMEs meet the EU’s changing ESG requirements more edciently while
providing an ESG marketplace. —Andrea Murad

Latin America: BTG Pactual Empresas

BTG Pactual Empresas marches toward the future bit by bit and byte by byte. It
metamorphosed into a fully digital bank in late 2021, designed to serve business customers
better. As a result, it now provides SMEs with a “variety of quality products and services with
low service cost and less bureaucracy.” Businesses have responded favorably. The bank’s
business loan portfolio has increased an astonishing 227% from 2019, to 143 billion Brazilian
reais (about $29 billion). SME loans represent about 10% of that total, including lending
solutions for rural credit needs and solar Dnancing. BTG Pactual Empresas also provides
client advisory services for ESG agendas.

The digital bank’s platform, which is available online and from app stores for iOS and Android,
enables speedy service. For example, more than 99% of new customers have fully functional
accounts within an hour of signing up.

The platform also oMers digitized services that have been developed to support SMEs and
other businesses. These include open banking (enabling users to manage all accounts,
regardless of bank, in one place), multiuser accounts, online invoicing, payroll processing,
collection management, foreign currency exchange, and a host of other services. All told,

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SMEs can choose from more than 30 business automations—including those available
through Google Workspace. Live customer support is available 24/7 via the user’s channel of
choice (chat, WhatsApp, email or phone). When users need actual paper money, bank
partnerships enable fee-free withdrawals from a broad network of ATMs. —LS

Middle East: Arab Bank

At Arab Bank in Jordan, SME business accounts for nearly 12% of the total portfolio. As of
June, the bank had a total SME loan value of $824 million, including $165 million in loans
issued between the Drst quarter of 2022 and the Drst quarter of 2023. A staM of 35 dedicated
employees serves more than 12,000 SME customers—representing a 12.6% share of the SME
market in Jordan—through 21 dedicated SME centers. Other support channels include a 24/7
customer care center and digital platforms.

While the bank serves an extensive range of SMEs, it mainly targets businesses in the
medical, professional, training and recreation, beauty and wellness, and retail sectors—along
with home-based businesses led by female entrepreneurs. These and other SMEs turn to
Arab Bank for a broad array of Dnancing capabilities, including Dnancing against point-of-sale
proceeds, medical loans, vehicle loans, revolving lines of credit and trade Dnance products.

Arab Bank is also active on the digital front. Its Arabi Next mobile application, launched in
2022, was developed speciDcally to meet the needs of Jordanian SMEs. Its features include
self-registration, a dashboard displaying company accounts, bill management capabilities,
funds transfer services, document retrieval, salary management and cardless ATM
withdrawals. A payment gateway enables SMEs to accept credit and debit cards and Apple
Pay and Android Pay payments. The Arabi E-Mart platform enables SMEs to sell products and
services online, while Arabi Shopix helps SMEs build their websites. Another signiDcant digital
oMering is the bank’s supply chain Dnancing platform. It helps SMEs optimize cash now by
empowering them to pay their suppliers early with Arab Bank Dnancing. —LS

North America: Royal Bank of Canada

With more than 17 million customers and employing more than 89,000 people, the Royal
Bank of Canada is a multinational Dnancial services organization with more than 1,200
branches—one of Canada’s largest banks. It oMers SMEs a broad range of “lending, leasing,
deposit, investment, foreign exchange, cash management, auto dealer Dnancing, trade
products, and services,” along with digital cross-border banking solutions, according to the

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bank.

In 2022, it granted more than $12.6 billion Canadian dollars (about $8.8 billion) in small-
business loans. Its digital platform includes SME services for marketing, payments, payroll
and business operations. Among these services is Ownr, a platform that helps entrepreneurs
start, manage and grow their businesses. RBC Insight Edge, meanwhile, is a business
dashboard oMering data-driven insights to help businesses make more informed decisions
about their customers and markets. It employs anonymized credit and debit card
information, combined with demographic and location data, to oMer business owners
improved insight into the markets in which they operate.

—LS

Western Europe: Santander

For the second year in a row, Santander was chosen as the top SME bank for Western Europe.
With odces in Spain, the UK and Portugal, it provides Dnancial products and services to more
than 4 million SMEs worldwide. SMEs are one of the bank’s largest customer segments,
composing over 90% of the bank’s corporate customers in Portugal. The bank focuses on
international trade, green Dnance and education to help SMEs prosper.

The bank has established platforms and programs to enable SMEs to develop an
international presence. Santander Trade provides information on global markets for trade
Dnance, and Santander Trade Club matches companies with an import or export counterpart.
The bank replicates best practices across its European footprint through its One Europe
strategy.

Santander provides green-Dnance and sustainability oMerings as clients transition to a low-

carbon economy. These include Dnancial products for purchasing, constructing and
renovating green buildings and developing sustainable and protected agriculture. The bank
also assists companies with renewable energy initiatives by Dnancing renewable-power and
low-carbon infrastructures.

With Santander X, the bank provides resources and training so that SMEs can scale and help
communities prosper. Santander has speciDc tools to assist SMEs, like Santander X Explorer, a
preincubation program that works with SMEs as they transform ideas into value propositions
and sustainable businesses; and Santander X Launch, which helps SMEs bring that project to

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market and raise capital. —AM

Best SME Bank Awards 2024

Regional Winners

Africa Ecobank

Asia-PaciDc OCBC

Caribbean Banreservas

Central America BAC Credomatic

Central & Eastern Europe CSOB

Latin America BTG Pactual Empresas

Middle East Arab Bank

North America Royal Bank of Canada

Western Europe Santander

US Regional Winners

Mid-Atlantic PNC Bank

Midwest Huntington National

Northeast Citizens Bank

Southeast First Citizens Bank

Southwest Frost Bank

West Citizens Business Bank

Related
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