An 8-point banking checklist to serve SMEs

Summary

Small and medium enterprises across Asia Pacific are pushing banks to move beyond working capital financing and deposits toward services that actively improve business outcomes. Drawing on research spanning 45 banks across 12 Asia Pacific markets, the full arc of an SME's banking relationship comes into view, from company incorporation and start-up financing through to community building and peer networking.

SME banking propositions increasingly bundle accounting, invoicing, payroll, cybersecurity and marketing support alongside traditional lending, a shift that affects attach rates and creditworthiness assessment for banks such as DBS, UOB and OCBC. The data generated across these integrated services also strengthens credit profiling for owners who previously struggled to access financing.

Government-backed moratoriums, grants and Covid-era relief programmes are shown to have accelerated banks' engagement with SME customers, reshaping expectations around cash flow management, business account reconciliation and future business forecasting as core banking deliverables rather than optional add-ons.

• Coverage spans business set-up, account reconciliation, cash flow, payroll, forecasting, cybersecurity, marketing and community-building
• Insight into how data-sharing through open APIs is reshaping SME credit access across the region

What does it take for a bank to become genuinely indispensable to an SME's day-to-day operations, rather than just its balance sheet?