New levels of growth and profitability

Overview
SMEs continue to be a rapidly growing and profitable market in the financial services sector. However, these are challenging times and achieving good profitability isn’t easy. New entrants are also gaining a foothold as the relationship between traditional banks and SME customers weakens.

This year’s event will focus on how banks can maximise the value of SMEs. It will explore the factors affecting the funding of SMEs and ways of generating profits whilst building long-term relationships with them. The conference will include interactive sessions. 

A new feature will be a customer panel of SMEs and members of the Efma Business Banking Advisory Council. This will debate how customer-centric banks really are, and how they can be more responsive to customer needs.

Key questions

• Where will growth and value come from? How can banks attract new customers, gain more value from existing ones and build a sustainable market share? Does the answer lie in closer customer relationships, value-added tools and targeted propositions?
• Where will the main threats come from? Do new entrants pose a real threat? Is bank disintermediation happening? Are banks sufficiently flexible and agile to meet the challenges ahead?
• How can the sales and service model be improved? How will digitisation affect product and service delivery? What’s the role of segmentation, organisation and distribution channels? How can banks develop an innovative but profit-driven SME model?

Hot topics

Other key topics will include:

• Helping small business owners to run their companies more effectively 
• Non-banking offers for SMEs
• Bancassurance for SMEs
• Strengthening the relevance of banks
• Low and high-profile SME customer management 
• Connecting SMEs across the West-East corridor