Some regional banks stand out globally.
The world’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises this year, Singapore’s UOB, is one such bank. It provides its primarily southeast Asian clients with a quality of service that would be well-received by small and medium-sized enterprises in any market worldwide.
To be clear, UOB is an international commercial bank with a presence throughout the Association of southeast Asian Nations (Asean) region and many of the key global economies. But it is unapologetically an Asean-focused bank, with no ambition to be everything to all clients everywhere.
Such a clear focus is a strength of the bank – and a strength of its SME banking business.
Few other banks in Asean can offer SMEs what UOB offers across the region, and similarly few banks can offer SMEs outside the region the type of access to the region that UOB can.
Shortlisted
- Banco Santander
- DBS
And when the region is the world’s fifth-largest economy, the fastest growing economic trading bloc and one that is set to grow even faster, that is not a bad market position to have.
Indeed, UOB is in a good position, given the record value of foreign direct investment flowing into Asean – in 2022 it hit a high of $224 billion – as well as the annual $650 billion of intra-regional trade, $650 billion of trade with China and $500 billion of trade with Europe and the US.
UOB’s advantages include subsidiaries in key Asean markets – Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam – as well as in China and Hong Kong; one of the most comprehensive ranges of SME-focused banking products and services; and long experience of banking this type of client.
“Banking SMEs has always been our strength,” says Frederick Chin, head of group wholesale banking and markets at UOB, which was founded in 1935 with a focus on banking these clients.
He adds that the bank’s long-term commitment to SMEs, its innovative local and cross-border solutions and a focus on helping them with their digital and sustainable transformation, has enabled the bank to build trust with these clients and support their growth and development.
SMEs naturally need financing – lots of it to fuel growth. They are also increasingly turning to sustainable finance to drive their sustainable growth and development. Together with this, they need efficient and effective digital banking solutions, and support in expanding cross-border business.
These three areas are where UOB is strategically focused, enabling its SME clients to expand and evolve.
This is what Shake Shack, the US burger chain, drew on when it launched in Singapore before expanding into Malaysia. As its sole banking partner, UOB supported this investment and cross-border expansion, providing the company with local accounts, point-of-sale and merchant services, as well as cash management, working capital and foreign exchange solutions.
It is a classic example of how UOB helps bring SMEs from across the world to Asean. Importantly, the opposite is also true – UOB supports its Asean SME clients in their expansion in the region and outside, particularly to countries where they have a presence, such as the UK and US.
Banking SMEs has always been our strength
Frederick Chin
For example, the bank is supporting one of its clients to build student accommodation in the UK and another to build data centres.
Part of that support comes from UOB’s Business Circle programme, which is a networking and knowledge forum the bank has created for its entrepreneur and family-owned business clients in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
Just as important is everything the bank is providing in terms of digital banking. This includes the UOB SME App, which offers a single point of access for financing and financial insights, and UOB BizSmart, which is suite of digital solutions supporting clients in their digital transformation. These solutions cover digital transactions, point of sales, payments, logistics, accounting, human resources, payroll and cybersecurity.
By the end of last year, UOB BizSmart had helped 46,000 SMEs digitalize their business operations, in turn helping them to reduce business costs. UOB is also piloting UOBSend, a new feature to simplify and reduce the cost of cross-border payments.
This philosophy to simplify services extends to the complex area of sustainability, where the bank has developed and launched an industry-first online tool – the UOB Sustainability Compass – to help SMEs assess their current sustainability maturity stage and plan their transition journey.
These types of digital innovations are important, empowering companies to know more and do more. But transition journeys also need financing. UOB provides a wide range of sustainable finance options – green finance, sustainability-linked finance, sustainable trade finance and transition finance – and by the end of last year it had provided S$6.1 billion ($4.5 billion) in these formats, up 77% on 2022.
