Finance
A LENDING REVOLUTION:
bringing retail SMEs a new funding model that truly meets their needs
SMEs
often feel neglected by their money makers. As the international economy’s mainstay, they employ as much as 60% of the world’s workforce and account for 99% of all EU companies. Despite their undoubted financial and social significance, they are routinely left behind in national programmes, access to technology and, above all, funding. This is particularly so in retail SMEs. Cashflow shortages are holding them back and with little to no liquidity, their ability to compete with tech titans such as Amazon, Alibaba and others, who will never find it hard to access money at scale, is mightily impaired. E-commerce retail and wholesale operations are finding the financing ecosystem especially tough. Goods sellers worldwide must have fast and easy access to cash to keep their inventories full, especially when dealing with disruption. It is the best way to deal with recent global supply problems – Brexit aftershocks, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, shipping container and worker shortages.
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And if they go to the wall, the major retail barons take their place and retain their dominance forever. That’s bad for the market, bad for the economy and bad for the consumer.
to examine the wealth of numbers and details baffling - thwarting and impeding SMEs’ growth and denying the banks themselves the opportunities to forge sound business partnerships.
If any market is ripe for scrutiny and maximised efficiencies, it is funding for SMEs. And the traditional financing model simply does not fit their needs. They face silent discrimination by virtue of the inflexible rules and procedures of the traditional banking system.
The global pandemic saw huge growth in retail and e-commerce. It was common to see small one-man bands’ accelerated growth into middle-size companies. However, such staggering expansion is too fast for many businesses to scale up properly. This process includes attracting and retaining top talent; installing and upgrading appropriate tech systems; learning from competitors who have successfully grown; and identifying barriers to expansion.
Despite their massive investments in IT over the last decade, major banks remain one-trick ponies. “Show us your historical profits and our computer will tell you if you are eligible for financing or not”, they say. But that’s not how enterprising companies work in today’s fast-moving world. Retailers and wholesalers produce massive amounts of data each day that can be analysed in real-time, giving a financing institution much more insight into their actual health and needs, especially as organisations develop. This makes banks’ almost universal failure
None of these are especially easy – and they usually demand a lot of time and money. Time and again, business owners tell us the same story: “We live day to day, basically holding the company together with sticky tape and praying it will survive”. What these operations need are sophisticated inventory forecasting lenders. These providers can predict clients’ future
