On 7-8 May I attended the MENA regional SME finance meeting co-sponsored by IFC and the Arab Monetary Fund, the theme of which was "Building a high performing SME business". It gathered some 250 bankers and SME finance experts from the region and beyond. Discussion themes included:
perspectives on strategic opportunities from bank CEOs and international experts,
innovations in risk management,
maximizing revenues through strategic customer risk management,
banking on women,
making a difference with SME Islamic banking,
new technologies for improving the SME banking value proposition, and
using non-financial SME services for competitive advantage.
All the presentations shortly will be available at the SME Finance Forum at www.smefinanceforum.org. I learned many things at this meeting, but my biggest take-away was how much is possible for key SME products within Islamic finance structures...it's puzzling, given this, why we're not seeing more in this area from the growing number of Islamic financial institutions. The link below from Israa Capital has a useful summary of how many products can be built on fundamental islamic finance structures...
matt