HSBC to focus more on SME sector

Anjana SAMARASINGHE

HSBC will focus more on the local SME sector since this segment has become one of the key concerns in our operations in Sri Lanka Senior Executive Strategy and Channels Asia - Pacific Commercial Banking HSBC Subir Mehra said.

“We have been working on large corporates with affordable quality products and services. There was a fundamental change due to technological advancement in the industry which enabled bankers to provide more innovative products and services for SMEs which they can afford. Today internet and technologies such as ATM helps to offer products and services in a more cost effective way for the SMEs.

“Local customers are fast in adopting to latest technologies in the banking sector and there is a good response from local customers for internet banking and 35 per cent of our customers are using internet banking.

For the development in this sector we need to educate our customers and infrastructure facilities such as internet access much more affordable to the customers,” he said.

“We identified similar qualities among SMEs in the region.

Generally SMEs adopt a multi banking strategy where they go to neighbouring banks for their small transactions and they go to another bank for their complex transactions such as currency exchange which is called value added banking.

“ HSBC will position itself as a value added bank in the SME segment to facilitate their complex banking requirements, he said. “In the Sri Lankan market, we expect to introduce financing products targeting distributors of large scale corporates in Sri Lanka. This will be introduced in the first quarter of next year. These distributors represent the SME sector,” he said.

“We want our business to grow faster than the GDP growth of that respective country we operate. In Sri Lanka it is happening and that is a good sign for us. Not only Sri Lanka, all economies in the Asian region are hit by the high inflation rate.

“Though there are political issues in the country, Sri Lanka was able to maintain a 6 per cent GDP growth. We see Sri Lanka as a market to grow further,” Mehra said.

Talking about the competition in the local banking sector, Mehra said that since local businesses expand in the region local banks too are working on expanding its presence at a regional level to facilitate these businesses.

“As an international bank we experience healthy competition from local players which results in rapid development in the banking sector,” he said.