Awards for Excellence 2017
With all the factors that can affect the success and failure of an enterprise, financing SME clients can be a risky business – and one that many banks do not feel is worth the effort for the relatively small volumes of financing activity involved.
But a new strategy announced by Commerzbank late last year focuses the bank even further on serving mainstream German corporate clients, as well as developing the smaller end of the commercial sector – firms which fit into the EU’s definition of an SME (annual turnover under €50 million).
While the strategy saw its Mittelstands bank merge with its corporate and markets business, it also sees the retail unit take on businesses with a turnover of up to €15 million from €2.5 million previously. Partly as a result, it is reallocating capital to the retail division and aiming to double the number of new customers, after gaining one million in the last four years. It has also created a new division specifically for small businesses.