Barclays Bank Ghana has announced it has lined up plans to become the country’s number one lead financial enabler for business activities of small-medium enterprises in Ghana when it transitions fully to Absa by 2020.

According to officials of the Bank, with the coming of Absa, they will engage SMEs in a more dynamic way in providing relevant and tailor-made solutions at the right time and in the right structure.

Speaking at the Bank’s 7^th SME Clinic held at its Spintex Branch in Accra last week, Mrs Grace Elizabeth Anim-Yeboah, the Business Banking Director at Barclays Ghana said the Bank is poised to become the number one bank for SMEs and sees itself as the best financial enabler for the sector.

“As your financial enabler, Barclays wants to be the lead partner for SME growth in Ghana as we become Absa by providing the right financial and operational support. We believe that SMEs of today can easily become the multinationals of tomorrow,” Mrs Anim-Yeboah told participants at the clinic.

She added SMEs form a core part of the Bank’s business and these capacity-building engagements are to help SME clients improve their business processes, implement good corporate governance structures, improve customer service, instil excellent human resource management practices and have better access to credit.

The SME clinic was attended by over 60 clients who were taken through a series of sessions including Credit Sanctioning, Fraud Alerts, Forex Trading, Company succession plan among others. 

They were also introduced to the Bank’s various products and services such as Digital Banking, Mobile Money Collection Solution and Barclays Business Club all developed for their benefit. 

The Barclays SME Clinic has been designed to help SME clients to benefit from the Bank’s tailor-made capacity building programme aimed at educating and supporting SMEs in running a sound and sustainable business. It also creates a platform for the clients to interact directly with officials of the bank.

So far, over 400 SMEs have benefitted from the SME clinics in 2019.