EFTA is the first company in Tanzania which is seeking to employ financial leasing to boost employment levels in the country and to bring business growth opportunities to the so called missing middle.
Right.
Would you agree with the assertion that the poor have been hitherto stocked with micro credit whilst the SME sector has been starved?
The name of the Grand Global Hotel suggests no want of ambition. But the project ran into financial problems before building work had even finished, says its owner, Emmanuel Tugume. His bank raised interest rates, and would not make allowances for delays in construction. Mr Tugume eventually got a loan from GroFin, a specialist business lender, and now his hotel is thriving. But his experience with Uganda’s banks still rankles. “They do not adjust to people like us,” he says. “They look after the big-time clients.”
You’ve probably heard of fintech by now. Maybe your company has adopted some fintech services or maybe you use a fintech company for personal use.
Or, if you’re like most – although more tech-savvy companies are adopting fintech services every day – you’ve read or heard about it somewhere but you’re not quite sure how fintech works, what it is, or if it deserves your attention.
A Wall Street article “Silicon Valley: We Don’t Trust FICO Scores” is currently making waves concerning the usefulness of traditional credit scoring, the FICO score. A new generation of lenders (FinTech upstarts) is challenging the usefulness of one of the bedrocks of the modern financial system: the FICO score.
The following industry specialists are all speaking at the Business Funding Show; for further information visit http://businessfundingshow.com/. Up today we have Crowdcuve head of equity investment Michael Wilkinson.
JP Morgan recently announced a pilot project with OnDeck, one of the largest alternative lenders and one of the first, having started operations in 2007. This is only the most notable example of banks or credit unions entering “partnerships” with alternative lending companies (AFCs).
From the smallest rural villages in Bangladesh to the large, bustling metropolitan centers of Cairo or Istanbul, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the lifeblood of Islamic communities around the world, keeping local economies humming.
The technology behind Bitcoin -- that electronic money almost nobody understands -- is finally on the verge of going mainstream. American Express (AXP), Bain Capital, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs (GS), MasterCard (MA), the New York Life Insurance Company, the New York Stock Exchange -- all of them have poured millions of dollars into Bitcoin firms recently.
There has been a lot of discussion around the topic of SMEs and job creation. While SMEs can foster innovation, help diversify an economy, spread economic activity beyond the main urban hubs, give opportunities to women and youth and much more, their role in creating jobs – in the current economic environment – is key.
There are 200 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide that have no access to formal financial services. This represents a $2 billion gap of funds for capital investments and working capital to increase their growth prospects.
Why does this gap exist and who is stepping in to service the SMEs?
