Access Bank partners with businessmen and women for sustainable growth

With small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) in South Africa representing 98% of local businesses and employing almost 60% of the workforce, there is still an opportunity to surpass these numbers with a correct funding structure that removes red tape.

SME’s are an important artery in South Africa’s economic heartbeat and continue to contribute up to 39% to the country’s GDP, according to statistics from Mckinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. Despite this big financial contribution to the fiscal, SME’s are often hindered by many obstacles such as loadshedding, inflation and, most importantly, by flip-flopping economic policy which possesses too much red tape and bureaucracy.

Access Bank has always held a strong belief in supporting and nurturing businessmen and businesswomen who are playing a big role in the entrepreneurial space. With more than 70 years in business, Access Bank prides itself as a great partner to entrepreneurs and businessmen and women to bank on. They offer various financial solutions that are tailored to boost any business to discover new opportunities and reach their optimal potential and sustainability.

“Many businesses fall into the enterprise category of being small and relatively newly established, especially post covid-19. It is also a well-known fact that a very high percentage fail within the first two or three years. These businesses have very limited balance sheets and have little to no security to offer traditional banks and lenders. It is then very difficult to access capital to expand the business for longer term sustainable growth, or even the short- term cash flow required to execute on a new contract or opportunity,” said Paul De Bruyn, Access Bank’s Executive: Business and Commercial Banking.

Access Bank has recently launched transactional and commercial accounts tailored for businesses with annual turnover of between R5million and R750million. These come with low monthly fees which include all day-to-day transactional banking activities for your business, from card swipes and online purchases to debit orders, beneficiary payments and internet banking.

De Bruyn said besides their low interest, they also have relationship managers who handle business portfolios of their customers.

“We pride ourselves to be a high touch personal service bank where all businesses have a dedicated relationship manager looking after small portfolios of business customers. A customer can engage the relationship manager quickly to get a finance application or transactional account or any query attended to. We do not use large call centres to take queries. The relationship manager can be called directly, even after hours.”

About the future of SME’s, De Bruyn said business owners needed to make sure their businesses remain relevant and sustainable despite the country’s economic pressures.

They need to leverage new technologies and media platforms to reach their target customer market. They need to have a distinct value proposition to the market that makes them interesting and different to other businesses in the sector,” he said.