On the 11th of Sept 2018, Enterprise Singapore (ESG) held an event for the benefit of small business owners in Singapore. Lendingpot had the honour of being invited as one of the organizations to share our ideas and knowledge in the business financing ecosystem.
One common feedback that is regularly expressed by SMEs is the feeling of frustration. During the course of their business, many SMEs often find themselves requiring business financing, only to be told that their businesses are not eligible for it.
As stated clearly within the title of this event, ESG seeks to provide insights on how to improve SMEs’ access to business loans.
Coincidentally, this is similar to the value proposition that Lendingpot intends to bring to SMEs, albeit in the digital sphere. In this event, we witnessed first-hand how useful it is to the SMEs.
Business owners are able to receive business financing solutions or ideas when they present their businesses’ problems, instead of being rejected or accepted when they apply directly with the bank for a specific product.
This means that not every single SME who applies for a government scheme will be granted a loan.
The government does not issue the loans directly to business owners because they do not have the infrastructure in place to do that. It is a natural extension then, to piggy-back on the banks to issue the loans.
Thus, in order to receive a government-backed loan, SMEs will have to pass the stringent credit scoring and criteria of the banks.
SMEs must then either adapt to the banks’ criteria or find alternative sources of financing.
This event not only brings together different types of lenders in the same place (i.e. banks, financial institutions, peer-to-peer lenders), it also brings along lenders with different expertise and business financing solutions (i.e. asset-backed loans, invoice financing).
This gives small business owners some exposure to other possibilities of financing that could potentially solve their short- or long-term problems.
Solutions such as invoice financing offered by financial institutions or P2P financing platforms may offer better value propositions for SMEs.
This inaugural event held by ESG is directly related to SME business financing.
Considering the great benefit it brings to SMEs, we hope that subsequent events can involve more SMEs as well as lenders.
Here’s hoping that the government will continue to be proactive and do great work in its quest to aid small business owners.
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Lendingpot.sg operates a Business Loan Marketplace that allows an SME to connect to multiple lenders with just one application, allowing the SME to know who its prospective lenders are and the rates that they offer, in a very short time.
Eric Koh is passionate about helping SMEs grow and has spent years interacting with business owners at OCBC and IFS Capital. He is interested in 70s rock ‘n roll, the odd novel and copious amounts of historical trivia.
