MSMEs Resilience in turbulent Times.
Let’s just start this particular blog by acknowledging that, since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, the crisis presented a mixture of experiences both to individuals and businesses. While the crisis availed different opportunities to some, the greater impact hasn’t been easy on businesses and households.
We have witnessed businesses shutting down their operations and, adapting new survival strategies while hanging onto their last straw of working capital.
Globally, businesses have had to resort to innovative ideas to survive the current environment. Some of the key forward-looking strategies businesses have to consider for survival are:
Health and safety of the resources
Scaling down the workforce to comply with prescribed protective protocols
Adapting new strategies like remote working, shifts where applicable, salary cut, redundancy, etc.
Business optimization- closing some units/departments or total closure.
Cost-cutting mechanisms also naturally applied
At the macro level, economies have to cope with unprecedented realities affecting the business environment. This has resulted in businesses going back to the drawing board for survival options. MSME businesses have been known to drive stable and resilient economies all over the world where sound enabling environments have been put in place. MSME has become a regularly used acronym for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise and informs our discussion.
According to an article by Phyllis Wakiaga, CEO of Kenya Association of Manufacturers and the UN Global Compact Network Representative for Kenya, Kenya’s Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) contribute approximately 40% of the GDP with the majority falling in the informal sector.
This informs the deliberate forward-looking effort and mechanisms that I&M Bank has put in place for a successful scale-up of MSMEs in the country. In a bid to support financial inclusion for MSMEs, I&M bank has introduced an all-weather dynamic approach in walking the journey with MSME customers for superior customer experience with a profound business resilience. Below are some of the offerings for MSMEs:
A warm relationship with customized business advisory
Bundled flexible Working capital solutions up to Kes.3Million with a competitive TAT
(short-term loans, temporary overdrafts, LPO & Invoice discounting facilities, etc.)
State of art alternative banking experience- Swift Mobile and Internet Banking
Attractive current account benefits
Quick Unsecured bid bonds
As we all navigate through these turbulent times, we assure the MSME customers that we deeply understand their plight and walk with them through this journey. WE encourage them to take full advantage of our available solutions because we are on your side!
