Awards for Excellence 2019
The region’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises is Bancolombia.
It is unsurprising that the award goes to a bank in Colombia given that the sector is so important to the financial system – 99% of all companies are SMEs and they generate more than 80% of Colombia’s employment and around 50% of GDP.
There are more than three million registered SMEs in the country; Bancolombia banks 1.6 million of them.
In total in 2018, the bank grew SME deposits by 11.3%, loans by 5.7% and net earnings by 11.6%. The bank now has 36% of all SME loans in the country.
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| Maria Bibiana Botero |
Under the leadership of Maria Bibiana Botero, director of SME strategy at Bancolombia, the bank has evolved its segmentation of SMEs to better match products and services, developing, for example, a dedicated banking app for SME customers.
Previously Bancolombia had just three basic internal SME categories – big, medium and small – but has now evolved a more sophisticated approach that overlays demographic, sector and transactional information.