Why don’t banks care about SMEs? For a service sector dealing almost solely with numbers and structured data, the world of small business lending could not be better suited to disruption by digital machines. But recently, Bank of England governor Mark Carney rightly pointed out that, despite small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) facing a £22bn funding gap, almost half don’t [...]
Greg Clark’s flawed and feeble remedy will fail to stamp out the late payment problem Brexit confusion, in-fighting, and leadership peacocking have marred both the Labour and Conservative Party conferences this year, but business secretary Greg Clark provided a glimmer of hope for SMEs this week. Large companies could be forced to nominate a board member to ensure that invoices are paid properly as part of a planned crackdown on [...]
Let GRG be a cautionary tale for finance providers that fail to understand SMEs Small businesses just want to be understood by their finance provider. And distressed businesses are those most in need of an understanding partner. In light of this, it’s startling to have the systematic mistreatment of small business customers by RBS’s Global Restructuring Group (GRG) confirmed. While RBS wasn’t shown to have targeted otherwise viable [...]
