The Pan-African banking group, the Eco bank Group has been named the African SME Bank of the Year at the just concluded African Banker Awards 2021.

Eco bank Group beats a host of other banks in the African Banker Awards 2021 to take home the SME Award despite a 2020 tumultuous year. The year 2020 has been characterised by the Covid-19 pandemic which continues to ravage many African economies, with Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) taking the greatest hit.

However, since the onset of Covid-19, Eco bank Group has considerably scaled up investment in programmes targeting SMEs. For instance, SME-focused lines of credit, providing technical assistance to SME development institutions and building SMEs’ capacity via linkage programmes in partnership with its strategic partners are some of such programmes that the group has invested in.

In addition, some of the measures taken by the Bank to support SMEs in 2020 include:

Proactively instituting mitigating actions, including tenor extensions and moratoriums on interest to assist SMEs to manage their loan repayments; Increasing the utilisation of digital channels such as Eco bank Omni Lite to provide customers with capabilities to make payments remotely and conveniently; Up skilling staff to ensure their capacity to help develop the SME sector; Collaborating with existing risk sharing partners, particularly Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) to share a portion of the risk associated with lending to the SME sector.

Moreover, partnering with tech giant Google to provide SME customers with the means to develop free online presence through the Google My Business platform; Collaborating with the African Union’s Development Agency – AUDA-NEPAD – to focus on strengthening Africa’s support for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and assist their recovery from the impact of the pandemic by empowering MSMEs with access to capabilities, markets and finance so that they can play a pivotal role in restarting Africa’s economies are part of the initiatives undertaken by The Group.

In addition, The Group has been at the forefront of promoting gender inclusion and closing the gender finance gap through innovative initiatives such as ‘El1evate by Eco bank’ that targets women-led and women-focused businesses across the continent.

Among other criteria, the African SME Bank of the Year award 2021 recognises the bank which has significantly contributed to the development of the SME sector, thus helping them to build the economic backbone of the continent. Part of the entry criteria required that the winning bank has significantly catalysed funding into the private sector in Africa and promoted enterprise development by facilitating credit and access to finance for SMEs.

Taking the award, Eco bank Group Executive, Commercial Banking, Josephine Ankomah, noted that with all these interventions by the Eco bank Group, they deserve the award.

She also highlighted the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and noted that it required resilience and innovation. “We needed to rethink our business and provide innovative ways to assist our SME customers to help them to survive the difficulties brought about by the pandemic.”

Josephine Ankomah concluded with a closing remark, “We are truly honoured to receive this recognition. Our immense gratitude goes to our staff, customers and partners who have made this possible.”