Library
Mar 11, 2019
A new report by Fraedom reveals banks are working to address SMEs globally. According to the report, 61 percent of senior executives in the banks view SMEs as their current biggest growth opportunity, with a strong bias towards the medium enterprises (50-249 employees). Fintechs are also stepping up and becoming a catalyst for growth for SMEs,...
Mar 08, 2019
Private equity and venture capital funds with gender-balanced senior investment teams generated 10 percent to 20 percent higher returns compared with funds that have a majority of male or female leaders, according to a report released today by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group. The report, Moving Toward Gender Balance in Private Equity and...
Mar 08, 2019
Tracey Davies, President of Money20/20, and founder of the Rise Up initiative, outlines the five ways the program empowers women at work as the initiative comes to Singapore. I have always been a hopeful optimist about the trajectory of women, but as the number of women reaching the top just hasn’t made the progress I expected, I have become much...
Mar 07, 2019
Technology-enabled innovation in financial services (FinTech) can extend the benefits of financial inclusion to millions of unbanked and underbanked people around the world. However, the rise of FinTech presents many regulatory challenges - for emerging and developing economies in particular. Consequently a number of regulators in advanced,...
Mar 07, 2019
CreditEase - an SME Finance Forum member - founder and CEO Ning Tang recently shared with Mckinsey his perspective on how fintech players, from both within and outside China, can capture the opportunity among small and midsize Chinese businesses and how artificial intelligence (AI) can help. The following commentary is adapted from that...
Mar 07, 2019
Building small businesses that contribute to the economy and create jobs is one of South Africa’s biggest development opportunities. Small enterprises employ between 50 and 60 percent of South Africa’s work force and contribute around 34 percent of GDP. However, the small business sector has been relatively stagnant over the last decade, and only...
Mar 04, 2019
SME Finance Forum member Xero, will be providing Kiwi small businesses with crucial mental health support through a new pilot programme called XAP. XAP or the Xero Assistance Programme will be available free of charge through Xero’s global provider, Benestar, and initially offered to 5,000 small business owners, their employees and their families...
Mar 04, 2019
The Mastercard Foundation in partnership with BFA released Digital Commerce and Youth Employment in Africa, new research that shows 80 million young people will benefit from the rise of digital commerce in Africa by 2030. These findings indicate that the digital commerce sector has the potential of disrupting the future of work on the continent...
Mar 01, 2019
This Forbes' article written by John Welsh, includes: a profile on CreditEnable; highlights about the CEO and Founder Nadia Sood’s career and outlines CreditEnable's 'Changemakers Programme', an initiative they have just launched in conjunction with the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), the world’s largest SME association, representing 70...
Mar 01, 2019
Remarkably, a small fraction of firms account for most of the job and output creation in high-income and developing countries alike. Does this imply that the path to enabling more economic dynamism lies in selectively targeting high-potential firms? Or would pursuing broad-based reforms that minimize distortions be more effective? Inspired by...