Very Nice article on The importance of a vibrant MSME sector
The importance of a vibrant MSME sector in the context of the aggregate economy can’t
be over-estimated as it accounts for:
• Roughly one-third of aggregate economy gross value added
• Approximately one-third of manufacturing output in the country
• 45% of all Indian exports
• Three-fourths of all establishments in the country
• Provide employment to around 131.2 million people
However, the MSME sector has not received the due attention it deserves from the financial system on account of the various
challenges inherent in servicing this segment. Like we demonstrated earlier, lending to MSMEs should allow the banks to ameliorate the
deleterious impact of the secular trend of Disintermediation and the cyclical challenges of rising NPAs due to an over-extended largesize
corporate sector.
Thus, it would be fair to surmise that a business realignment towards MSME lending is the antidote to the ills afflicting the Indian banking
system currently. This is one of the rare instances where the commercial imperative of higher growth and profitability is aligned with the
societal imperative of financial inclusion.
The rest of this report deals with the key issues impacting the supply and demand of credit to the MSME segment. Effort has been made
to diagnose the key financial and operational challenges involved in servicing this segment. Finally, the key thrust of this report is to
illustrate the similarities between the business models for the retail and the MSME segment and the relevance of applying the key
success strategies especially the adoption of a credit scoring fueled information lending model in achieving robust and sustainable risk
adjusted growth.
MSME FINANCING – SUPPLY, DEMAND & GAP ANALYSIS
Source: RBI & TransUnion CIBIL Calculations
Overall bank credit to the Micro & Small Enterprises (MSE) has increased at a CAGR of 15.2% from INR 2.5 trillion in FY08 to INR 9.0
trillion FY17. This is marginally ahead of the 13.4% and 13.9% growth exhibited by the Nominal GDP and the Non-food Credit
respectively over the same time period. Thus, MSE credit penetration (as measured by proportion to GDP) has increased from around
5.2% in FY08 to a high of 6.4% in FY15.
Ongoing deceleration in economic activity and the emergence of the NPA overhang in the past couple of years has meant that credit
growth to the MSE sector has slowed down considerably. This has manifested itself in share of MSE Lending coming down as a
proportion of the GDP as well as a proportion of the total non-food credit.
Most SMEs in India face poor access to finance within a financial system dominated by banks. The following points will conclusively
highlight the scale of funding challenges faced by the Indian MSME sector:
• MSME bank credit to GDP ratio for India was at around 6.2% in FY 15 – less than one-sixth of the levels seen in countries like Korea
and China. It is around one-fourth of countries like Thailand and Malaysia and is even lower than Bangladesh.
• As per IFC, the total financing demand of the Indian MSME sector is around INR 32.5 trillion – comprised of entrepreneur’s contribution
of INR 4.6 trillion and estimated external finance demand of INR 27.9 trillion.
• Considering that the MSMEs have access to formal finance of around INR 10 trillion, the sector is grappling with a formal credit gap of
around INR 17.9 trillion. The enormity of the financial challenge is clear from the fact that the credit gap is close to twice the actual
outstanding amount of formal credit extended to the sector.
From a sectoral perspective, the credit gap for the manufacturing sector (73% of aggregate credit gap) is much higher than services
sector due to the capital intensive nature of the manufacturing enterprises. This trend is exacerbated by the fact the bank lending to the
Services sector has expanded at the expense of Manufacturing. Share of Services sector in aggregate MSE lending has increased from
47% in FY08 to 59% in FY17.
• As per the sixth economic census, roughly 78% of all enterprises in India are self-financed and have no access to financing from
formal sources.
MSME FINANCING – KEY CHALLENGES
Inadequate access to financing by the MSMEs is a function of the inherent limitations of the current business models of the financial
institutions. The underlying heterogeneity, pervasive geographical presence of the MSME sector and the utilization of physical bank
branches for bulk of the loan origination means that entrepreneurs in remote locations lack access to finance. Even though Banks have
tried to ease this issue through the usage of the Banking Correspondents model, access remains a key challenge – especially for
entrepreneurs based out of low-income or geographically far-flung areas.
The current business model is also characterized by manual check-list based risk assessment at the origination stage. MSMEs are also
bedeviled by the insistence of the banks on following a cumbersome and inflexible documentation procedure that is difficult for new
borrowers. The net result is a significant increase in turnaround times. Currently, the sector is characterized by turnaround times (for
loans < INR 1 Million) ranging from 17 days for the NBFC sector to 30 days for PSU Banks.
Such high level of turnaround time means that the formal financial sector is unable to provide timely credit to entrepreneurs in times of a
crisis – especially important as MSME entrepreneurs have very limited financial capabilities to handle life cycle shocks. These
entrepreneurs turn to informal sources in such crisis situations and it is difficult to bring them back into the formal financial sector after
such an experience.
Despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary (NPA analysis by size segments showed that the MSME-CMR segment had one
of the best performance), most financial sector participants consider the MSME sector to be massively risky and are loath to disburse
loans without adequate collateral. World Bank Enterprise surveys show that around 81% of all loans in South Asia are collateralized –
significantly higher than the 64% share in high income OECD countries. Further, most financial institutions insists on immovable
collateral like land or buildings on account of unenforceable secured transaction laws. Thus, MSME loans have comparatively higher
rejection rate for feasible projects.
The informal nature of most MSMEs, consequent lack of adequate compliance to tax and other legal regulations means that most
MSMEs find it difficult to adapt to the high levels of document requirements of the formal financial system. This situation is exacerbated
by the lack of qualified personnel for preparing the annual financial statements. Consequently, most MSMEs gravitate towards the
informal system that ask for little documentation.
The combination of the above discussed trends of physical branch based origination systems, low access, high turnaround times due to
complicated processes, inadequate access to collateral and documentation and perceptions of higher risk translate into significantly
higher cost of funding in terms of both the interest rate as well as processing costs for the MSMEs. The high cost of financing in turn has
a significant adverse impact on the future profitability and growth of the sector.
MSME LENDING – CREDIT SCORING BASED INFORMATION LENDING
The centrality of the MSMEs in ensuring India’s future economic and employment growth and the inability of the formal financial sector in
supporting the continued robust growth of MSMEs underline the need for a radical redesign of the entire MSME lending value chain.
Fortunately, the banks and the NBFCs already have a business segment – Retail Lending – that can serve as a guidepost for
redesigning a business model that can facilitate robust volume growth whilst maintaining risk under control.
As our previous research article “Credit Bureaus, Scoring & Technology – Key Pillars Of Sustainable Retail Lending” illustrated, financial
institutions have been able to robust risk-adjusted growth in retail lending in the past few years as the confluence of the structural trends
of the advent of the Credit Bureaus like TransUnion CIBIL, increasing information technology intensity and the resultant development of
credit scoring based automatic decision making has radically redefined the consumer lending business model from “manual, judgmental
and relationship driven” to “digital, credit scoring and transaction driven”. This paradigm shift in the business model has translated into
multi-faceted benefits for consumer lending industry, consumers and the aggregate economy.
In contrast to the current practice of a one-size-fits-all risk assessment system based on financial statement analysis and
collateralization, banks need to come up with risk assessment systems that are targeted at different commercial client segments.
6/8
Financial Statement Lending is suitable for large enterprises with a significant history of audited financial statements and consequent
financial transparency. Risk assessment and monitoring is largely a function of achievement and maintenance of financial performance
covenants.
Asset Based Lending i.e. Collateralized Lending should be used for medium-sized firms that exhibit the characteristics of limited
financial transparency, inadequate future cash flow generation capacity but access to reasonable amount of moveable collateral like
high quality accounts receivables and inventory and immovable collateral like land and buildings.
Credit Scoring Based Information Lending is the most appropriate form of lending for Micro and Small Enterprises that may lack
updated financial statements as well as reasonable amounts of collateral. In this type of lending, decisions involving the approval of the
loan, pricing and the other terms and conditions are linked to the Credit Score.
Credit Scoring is a quantitative technique in which the future probability of default is determined by financial and non-financial
characteristics of both the business and the business owner. A well-known example of Credit Score is the CIBIL MSME Rank (MSME
(CMR)) score provided by TransUnion CIBIL. The MSME (CMR) measures and predicts the future probability of default over a one-year
horizon on a rank scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the best and 10 being the worst.
CREDIT SCORING BASED INFORMATION LENDING – KEY BENEFITS
Just like Consumer Lending, judicious use of credit scoring results in multifaceted benefits to lenders, borrowers and the aggregate
economy.
Use of credit scoring and the associated change in risk assessment practices leads to greater process standardization and concomitant
increase in objectivity in risk assessment practices. Financial Institutions can achieve meaningful increase in profitability as credit
scoring can reduce the costs associated with the processing of individual applications whilst increasing the volumes as lenders are able
to safely approve marginal applications that an individual underwriter may have rejected.
Various international studies have documented the positive impact of credit scoring on the availability, price and risk of credit to micro
and small enterprises. A US Study examining the benefits of credit scoring for micro business lending estimated that the usage of credit
scoring resulted in the loan processing costs coming down from a range of USD 500-1800 to around USD 100. Another study by the
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found out that usage of credit scoring led to significant increase in credit availability especially in lowincome
areas – traditionally the geographic segments facing the largest credit gap – due to the rise in objectivity of the credit
assessment process.
The usage of credit scoring has the potential of solving the access challenges faced by MSMEs based in geographically remote areas
that have comparatively lower penetration of formal financial sector. Research by Raghuram Rajan and Mitchell Peterson showed that
the confluence of the trend of availability of credit information from infomediaries like Credit Bureaus and ability of banks to synthesize
this information through Credit Scoring and Information Technology investments has resulted in significant expansion of the distance
between the small firms and their lenders.
The combination of credit scoring and automatic decisioning platforms provided by Credit Bureaus like TransUnion CIBIL can have a
significant impact on the turnaround time of micro and small business lending. Since the majority of applications come from applicants
that are low risk in nature, an automatic decision rule (say accept all companies having a MSME (CMR) rank of 4 or below) would
significantly reduce the turnaround time for bulk of the applicants. Conversely, turnaround times are also reduced by explicit rejection
rules e.g. reject all applicants having a MSME (CMR) rank of 8 or above. It is our opinion that the current turnaround time of 17-30 days
can be reduced to around 1-5 days by utilizing the credit scoring risk assessment system in conjunction with automatic rule-based
decisioning systems.
Proactive utilization of Consumer Bureau data as well periodic monitoring of bureau scores should lead to a meaningful reduction in bad
debts. It is a well-established fact that enterprises would exhibit certain behavior patterns like irregular payments, deteriorating credit
score, multiple financial enquiries etc. before showing actual delinquency. A well-thought out delinquency indicator alert system
developed in partnership with a Credit Bureau would allow a lender to identify the set of clients going through a challenging time. This in
turn allows the financial institutions to limit the bad debt exposure as well as implement risk mitigation strategies that benefit both the
lender and the borrower.
In addition to application scoring, Credit Scores like the MSME (CMR) developed by TransUnion CIBIL can be leveraged for Collections
purposes as well. Collection process efficiency and profitability can be significantly increased by segmenting the default and the neardefault
clients into collection priority buckets through the usage of scores and ability and propensity of future payments.
Thus, the principal benefits accruing to a lender – lower bad debt expense, reduced turnaround time, lesser processing / operational
cost – result in expanded credit at comparatively lower cost to the micro and small enterprises. Additionally, there is a meaningful
improvement in the service quality as well.
In conclusion, it would be fair to say that the usage of credit scoring would go a long way in expanding credit availability at comparatively
lower cost to the MSME sector – one of the prime movers of the Indian economy and one of the principal sectors suffering from financial
exclusion.
MSME LENDING – PROFITABILITY STRATEGIES
Conventional wisdom suggests that the profitability of the MSME segment is likely to below-par on account of myriad operational and
financial challenges in servicing this segment. The profitability question become even more challenging in today’s economic scenario
characterized by weakening economic growth and rising NPAs.
However, IFC research of MSME Banking business models across various countries shows that banks can tackle this challenge by
having some innovations in the business model. Following best practices that banks have used to enhance the profitability of the SME
lending segment:
• Transitioning the business model from a relationship based lending business model to a sophisticated high volume approach that
emphasizes quantitative credit score based risk assessment system to get scalability and efficiency advantages.
• Harnessing the synergy between the MSME lending and personal banking of the MSME owners through retail or personal banking
divisions to enhance aggregate profitability.
• Sophisticated risk-tier based pricing dynamic pricing to better capture the risk-adjusted profitability and allow differentiated lending to
different risk profiles.
• Successful banks have developed product-specific profitability models to identify the optimum bouquet of products / services for the
MSME segment. In addition to asset products, successful banks have targeted the sale of non-lending products to enhance the overall
risk-adjusted profitability.
• Early warning risk indicators that allow the bank to proactively tackle the loans that are about to become delinquent is also a major
factor that distinguishes between a profitable and loss making portfolio. Key attributes of this approach would include the ability to timely
respond to arrears, maintenance of credit relationships as long as the situation seems resolvable and proactive loss minimization when
risk mitigation fails.
The importance of a vibrant MSME sector in the context of the aggregate economy can’t
be over-estimated as it accounts for:
• Roughly one-third of aggregate economy gross value added
• Approximately one-third of manufacturing output in the country
• 45% of all Indian exports
• Three-fourths of all establishments in the country
• Provide employment to around 131.2 million people
However, the MSME sector has not received the due attention it deserves from the financial system on account of the various
challenges inherent in servicing this segment. Like we demonstrated earlier, lending to MSMEs should allow the banks to ameliorate the
deleterious impact of the secular trend of Disintermediation and the cyclical challenges of rising NPAs due to an over-extended largesize
corporate sector.
Thus, it would be fair to surmise that a business realignment towards MSME lending is the antidote to the ills afflicting the Indian banking
system currently. This is one of the rare instances where the commercial imperative of higher growth and profitability is aligned with the
societal imperative of financial inclusion.
The rest of this report deals with the key issues impacting the supply and demand of credit to the MSME segment. Effort has been made
to diagnose the key financial and operational challenges involved in servicing this segment. Finally, the key thrust of this report is to
illustrate the similarities between the business models for the retail and the MSME segment and the relevance of applying the key
success strategies especially the adoption of a credit scoring fueled information lending model in achieving robust and sustainable risk
adjusted growth.
MSME FINANCING – SUPPLY, DEMAND & GAP ANALYSIS
Source: RBI & TransUnion CIBIL Calculations
Overall bank credit to the Micro & Small Enterprises (MSE) has increased at a CAGR of 15.2% from INR 2.5 trillion in FY08 to INR 9.0
trillion FY17. This is marginally ahead of the 13.4% and 13.9% growth exhibited by the Nominal GDP and the Non-food Credit
respectively over the same time period. Thus, MSE credit penetration (as measured by proportion to GDP) has increased from around
5.2% in FY08 to a high of 6.4% in FY15.
Ongoing deceleration in economic activity and the emergence of the NPA overhang in the past couple of years has meant that credit
growth to the MSE sector has slowed down considerably. This has manifested itself in share of MSE Lending coming down as a
proportion of the GDP as well as a proportion of the total non-food credit.
Most SMEs in India face poor access to finance within a financial system dominated by banks. The following points will conclusively
highlight the scale of funding challenges faced by the Indian MSME sector:
• MSME bank credit to GDP ratio for India was at around 6.2% in FY 15 – less than one-sixth of the levels seen in countries like Korea
and China. It is around one-fourth of countries like Thailand and Malaysia and is even lower than Bangladesh.
• As per IFC, the total financing demand of the Indian MSME sector is around INR 32.5 trillion – comprised of entrepreneur’s contribution
of INR 4.6 trillion and estimated external finance demand of INR 27.9 trillion.
• Considering that the MSMEs have access to formal finance of around INR 10 trillion, the sector is grappling with a formal credit gap of
around INR 17.9 trillion. The enormity of the financial challenge is clear from the fact that the credit gap is close to twice the actual
outstanding amount of formal credit extended to the sector.
From a sectoral perspective, the credit gap for the manufacturing sector (73% of aggregate credit gap) is much higher than services
sector due to the capital intensive nature of the manufacturing enterprises. This trend is exacerbated by the fact the bank lending to the
Services sector has expanded at the expense of Manufacturing. Share of Services sector in aggregate MSE lending has increased from
47% in FY08 to 59% in FY17.
• As per the sixth economic census, roughly 78% of all enterprises in India are self-financed and have no access to financing from
formal sources.
MSME FINANCING – KEY CHALLENGES
Inadequate access to financing by the MSMEs is a function of the inherent limitations of the current business models of the financial
institutions. The underlying heterogeneity, pervasive geographical presence of the MSME sector and the utilization of physical bank
branches for bulk of the loan origination means that entrepreneurs in remote locations lack access to finance. Even though Banks have
tried to ease this issue through the usage of the Banking Correspondents model, access remains a key challenge – especially for
entrepreneurs based out of low-income or geographically far-flung areas.
The current business model is also characterized by manual check-list based risk assessment at the origination stage. MSMEs are also
bedeviled by the insistence of the banks on following a cumbersome and inflexible documentation procedure that is difficult for new
borrowers. The net result is a significant increase in turnaround times. Currently, the sector is characterized by turnaround times (for
loans < INR 1 Million) ranging from 17 days for the NBFC sector to 30 days for PSU Banks.
Such high level of turnaround time means that the formal financial sector is unable to provide timely credit to entrepreneurs in times of a
crisis – especially important as MSME entrepreneurs have very limited financial capabilities to handle life cycle shocks. These
entrepreneurs turn to informal sources in such crisis situations and it is difficult to bring them back into the formal financial sector after
such an experience.
Despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary (NPA analysis by size segments showed that the MSME-CMR segment had one
of the best performance), most financial sector participants consider the MSME sector to be massively risky and are loath to disburse
loans without adequate collateral. World Bank Enterprise surveys show that around 81% of all loans in South Asia are collateralized –
significantly higher than the 64% share in high income OECD countries. Further, most financial institutions insists on immovable
collateral like land or buildings on account of unenforceable secured transaction laws. Thus, MSME loans have comparatively higher
rejection rate for feasible projects.
The informal nature of most MSMEs, consequent lack of adequate compliance to tax and other legal regulations means that most
MSMEs find it difficult to adapt to the high levels of document requirements of the formal financial system. This situation is exacerbated
by the lack of qualified personnel for preparing the annual financial statements. Consequently, most MSMEs gravitate towards the
informal system that ask for little documentation.
The combination of the above discussed trends of physical branch based origination systems, low access, high turnaround times due to
complicated processes, inadequate access to collateral and documentation and perceptions of higher risk translate into significantly
higher cost of funding in terms of both the interest rate as well as processing costs for the MSMEs. The high cost of financing in turn has
a significant adverse impact on the future profitability and growth of the sector.
MSME LENDING – CREDIT SCORING BASED INFORMATION LENDING
The centrality of the MSMEs in ensuring India’s future economic and employment growth and the inability of the formal financial sector in
supporting the continued robust growth of MSMEs underline the need for a radical redesign of the entire MSME lending value chain.
Fortunately, the banks and the NBFCs already have a business segment – Retail Lending – that can serve as a guidepost for
redesigning a business model that can facilitate robust volume growth whilst maintaining risk under control.
As our previous research article “Credit Bureaus, Scoring & Technology – Key Pillars Of Sustainable Retail Lending” illustrated, financial
institutions have been able to robust risk-adjusted growth in retail lending in the past few years as the confluence of the structural trends
of the advent of the Credit Bureaus like TransUnion CIBIL, increasing information technology intensity and the resultant development of
credit scoring based automatic decision making has radically redefined the consumer lending business model from “manual, judgmental
and relationship driven” to “digital, credit scoring and transaction driven”. This paradigm shift in the business model has translated into
multi-faceted benefits for consumer lending industry, consumers and the aggregate economy.
In contrast to the current practice of a one-size-fits-all risk assessment system based on financial statement analysis and
collateralization, banks need to come up with risk assessment systems that are targeted at different commercial client segments.
6/8
Financial Statement Lending is suitable for large enterprises with a significant history of audited financial statements and consequent
financial transparency. Risk assessment and monitoring is largely a function of achievement and maintenance of financial performance
covenants.
Asset Based Lending i.e. Collateralized Lending should be used for medium-sized firms that exhibit the characteristics of limited
financial transparency, inadequate future cash flow generation capacity but access to reasonable amount of moveable collateral like
high quality accounts receivables and inventory and immovable collateral like land and buildings.
Credit Scoring Based Information Lending is the most appropriate form of lending for Micro and Small Enterprises that may lack
updated financial statements as well as reasonable amounts of collateral. In this type of lending, decisions involving the approval of the
loan, pricing and the other terms and conditions are linked to the Credit Score.
Credit Scoring is a quantitative technique in which the future probability of default is determined by financial and non-financial
characteristics of both the business and the business owner. A well-known example of Credit Score is the CIBIL MSME Rank (MSME
(CMR)) score provided by TransUnion CIBIL. The MSME (CMR) measures and predicts the future probability of default over a one-year
horizon on a rank scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the best and 10 being the worst.
CREDIT SCORING BASED INFORMATION LENDING – KEY BENEFITS
Just like Consumer Lending, judicious use of credit scoring results in multifaceted benefits to lenders, borrowers and the aggregate
economy.
Use of credit scoring and the associated change in risk assessment practices leads to greater process standardization and concomitant
increase in objectivity in risk assessment practices. Financial Institutions can achieve meaningful increase in profitability as credit
scoring can reduce the costs associated with the processing of individual applications whilst increasing the volumes as lenders are able
to safely approve marginal applications that an individual underwriter may have rejected.
Various international studies have documented the positive impact of credit scoring on the availability, price and risk of credit to micro
and small enterprises. A US Study examining the benefits of credit scoring for micro business lending estimated that the usage of credit
scoring resulted in the loan processing costs coming down from a range of USD 500-1800 to around USD 100. Another study by the
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found out that usage of credit scoring led to significant increase in credit availability especially in lowincome
areas – traditionally the geographic segments facing the largest credit gap – due to the rise in objectivity of the credit
assessment process.
The usage of credit scoring has the potential of solving the access challenges faced by MSMEs based in geographically remote areas
that have comparatively lower penetration of formal financial sector. Research by Raghuram Rajan and Mitchell Peterson showed that
the confluence of the trend of availability of credit information from infomediaries like Credit Bureaus and ability of banks to synthesize
this information through Credit Scoring and Information Technology investments has resulted in significant expansion of the distance
between the small firms and their lenders.
The combination of credit scoring and automatic decisioning platforms provided by Credit Bureaus like TransUnion CIBIL can have a
significant impact on the turnaround time of micro and small business lending. Since the majority of applications come from applicants
that are low risk in nature, an automatic decision rule (say accept all companies having a MSME (CMR) rank of 4 or below) would
significantly reduce the turnaround time for bulk of the applicants. Conversely, turnaround times are also reduced by explicit rejection
rules e.g. reject all applicants having a MSME (CMR) rank of 8 or above. It is our opinion that the current turnaround time of 17-30 days
can be reduced to around 1-5 days by utilizing the credit scoring risk assessment system in conjunction with automatic rule-based
decisioning systems.
Proactive utilization of Consumer Bureau data as well periodic monitoring of bureau scores should lead to a meaningful reduction in bad
debts. It is a well-established fact that enterprises would exhibit certain behavior patterns like irregular payments, deteriorating credit
score, multiple financial enquiries etc. before showing actual delinquency. A well-thought out delinquency indicator alert system
developed in partnership with a Credit Bureau would allow a lender to identify the set of clients going through a challenging time. This in
turn allows the financial institutions to limit the bad debt exposure as well as implement risk mitigation strategies that benefit both the
lender and the borrower.
In addition to application scoring, Credit Scores like the MSME (CMR) developed by TransUnion CIBIL can be leveraged for Collections
purposes as well. Collection process efficiency and profitability can be significantly increased by segmenting the default and the neardefault
clients into collection priority buckets through the usage of scores and ability and propensity of future payments.
Thus, the principal benefits accruing to a lender – lower bad debt expense, reduced turnaround time, lesser processing / operational
cost – result in expanded credit at comparatively lower cost to the micro and small enterprises. Additionally, there is a meaningful
improvement in the service quality as well.
In conclusion, it would be fair to say that the usage of credit scoring would go a long way in expanding credit availability at comparatively
lower cost to the MSME sector – one of the prime movers of the Indian economy and one of the principal sectors suffering from financial
exclusion.
MSME LENDING – PROFITABILITY STRATEGIES
Conventional wisdom suggests that the profitability of the MSME segment is likely to below-par on account of myriad operational and
financial challenges in servicing this segment. The profitability question become even more challenging in today’s economic scenario
characterized by weakening economic growth and rising NPAs.
However, IFC research of MSME Banking business models across various countries shows that banks can tackle this challenge by
having some innovations in the business model. Following best practices that banks have used to enhance the profitability of the SME
lending segment:
• Transitioning the business model from a relationship based lending business model to a sophisticated high volume approach that
emphasizes quantitative credit score based risk assessment system to get scalability and efficiency advantages.
• Harnessing the synergy between the MSME lending and personal banking of the MSME owners through retail or personal banking
divisions to enhance aggregate profitability.
• Sophisticated risk-tier based pricing dynamic pricing to better capture the risk-adjusted profitability and allow differentiated lending to
different risk profiles.
• Successful banks have developed product-specific profitability models to identify the optimum bouquet of products / services for the
MSME segment. In addition to asset products, successful banks have targeted the sale of non-lending products to enhance the overall
risk-adjusted profitability.
• Early warning risk indicators that allow the bank to proactively tackle the loans that are about to become delinquent is also a major
factor that distinguishes between a profitable and loss making portfolio. Key attributes of this approach would include the ability to timely
respond to arrears, maintenance of credit relationships as long as the situation seems resolvable and proactive loss minimization when
risk mitigation fails.
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