SME Business Banking is emerging as the most exciting area of retail banking. It’s not a surprise, as the gap between banks and SMEs is enormous: the potential is also enormous, because banks have rarely provided good services to SMEs. The feeling is mutual. Incredibly, research suggests that an SME that is turned down by a bank will never approach that bank again. Moneylenders, friends and family often must fill the gap that banks cannot cover.

Despite the fact that globally, there are 400 million small and medium businesses that employ most people around the world, SMEs are the equivalent of the unbanked masses in the world of consumer banking. They are often seen as low-margin and difficult clients. Research shows indeed that an SME that approaches a bank and is turned down is unlikely to ever approach another bank.

Among the big themes that we will be addressing in London in September:

• The emergence of new business models for SME lending
• Credit Risk Management in SME lending
• Dynamic scorecards: the digitalisation of credit scoring
• In transition: is it possible to go from corporate lending to SME lending?
• How to learn what SMEs really need
• The emerging bank-fintech partnerships in SME finance
• The Retailers’ Dilemma: Will Silicon Valley’s tech giants be best partners to small business — and take financing away from banks?
• Lending to Entrepreneurs: The gold dust of banking
• Balancing automation & relationship-based services

We’ll be sharing more details with you through over the next few months. Speaker requests should be directed to ronan.lynch@lafferty.com.

Lafferty Group provides research and advisory services to the banking industry worldwide, with specialisations in the fields of consumer and SME business banking, digital finance and lending, mobile wallets, and fintech.

Lafferty Group runs the International Retail Banking-Fintech Council, the International Cards, Payments and Mobile Council and Retail Banking Councils Africa, which meet twice a year. We also run an annual banking industry conference, and this year we present the first edition of the International SME Business Banking Forum, which will take place in London on 22-23 October.

ClearBank is the first clearing bank to enter the UK market in more than 250 years. Free from the constraints of legacy technology, built on a combination of public and private cloud infrastructure, ClearBank delivers open access to payment, current account and transactional clearing services. Financial services organisations, from banks and building societies through to new challenger banks and Fintechs will be able to process payments and offer new competitive transactional banking services more cost effectively, efficiently and quickly than ever before possible.