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Bank of America Merrill Lynch has made strong progress in the smaller corporate market. The bank serves one in three companies operating in the US – that is 46,000 small to medium-sized enterprises – and wins Euromoney’s award for North America’s best bank for SMEs.
Pam Cook heads business banking credit. She says that SMEs in the US are increasingly doing business abroad and that is where BAML outpaces its regional competitors. “It is a highly competitive market in terms of offering credit to small firms,” she says. “But then when they need a deposit account in China, that is when the big regional banks fall away and clients look to us.”
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Being a large international bank means that BAML can advise its SME clients on topics that concern them in their international business such as cybercrime and regulatory change. In addition to providing face-to-face advice, the bank provides online tools, such as the World Markets Entry Map and webcasts that enable clients to understand what it would mean for them to expand internationally.
“One of the challenges with SMEs is that they are not surrounded by the experts that a large corporate would have.