Sterling Bank Launches N50bn Facility For MSMEs

Sterling Bank Plc has launched a business support facility for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the country.

The Head of MSMEs Proposition, Sterling Bank, Mrs Benedicta Sardoh, described the importance of small and medium enterprises to an economy as enormous.

She said this was confirmed by several surveys and research conducted by the bank before the launch of the SME Banking Project recently.

Sardoh, who spoke at a press conference in Lagos on Tuesday, said, “MSMEs have a lot of challenges to contend with, particularly in the area of access to finance. In line with Sterling Bank’s vision of impacting lives and developing solutions, we have developed a scheme known as the Business Support Facility.”

According to a statement, the Business Support Facility is targeted at businesses that generate cash flow daily and the rental is monthly.

It said, “The scheme does not have a fixed interest rate because it is based on a digital score card, which is a scoring process where information about the prospective customer is used to determine the applicable interest based on his financial worth.

“The bank has set aside about N50bn to meet the urgent needs of existing and potential customers in the SME space before the end of the year.”

According to Sardoh, the scheme is aimed at enabling entrepreneurs to access loans to meet their urgent business needs and is payable over an extended period of 24 months.

“The maximum amount of loan a customer with collateral can get is N20m while those without collateral can get up to N5m,” she said.

According to her, the processing time is 48 hours and with minimal documentation.