Jim Baiden SME – Deputy MD of Fidelity Bank Ghana
Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited has created a platform for small and medium scale enterprises to share ideas on pertinent financial issues that may affect their businesses.
The seminar also enabled the bank to interact with the small businesses to understand their needs and therefore institute measures to satisfy them.
In Ghana, available data from the Registrar General’s department indicates that 90 percent of companies registered were micro, small and medium enterprises.
Jim Baiden, deputy Managing Director of the bank, said the SMEs were an important segment of the economy that it needed to focus on.
Over the years, he noted, Fidelity Bank had shown significant commitment to partnering SME businesses and it was for that reason that it continued to roll out friendly SME products and services to see businesses grow. Some of these products included semi secured loans, import clearing loan, commercial auto loan and overdrafts among others.
Because of that commitment, he said Fidelity Bank had set up the Micro Finance and SME Department to cater for the sector. The department’s aim was to provide financial services to the mass market and the small and medium enterprises.
He emphasized that the bank’s interest rates, fees and terms of payments were flexible enough for all types of businesses to access, adding that, this year, it intended strengthening the relationship it had with existing and new customers in many ways. He expressed the hope that the seminar would be an eye-opener which would in the long run facilitate the growth of local businesses.
Since its establishment in late 2006, Fidelity Bank Ghana has grown faster to become the 7th biggest bank in Ghana in terms of deposits and 9th in terms of assets.
By Charles Nixon Yeboah