Asia's best bank for SMEs 2020: UOB

Singapore’s banks have dominated this award in recent years and for good reason. The super-stable city state boasts a trio of excellent lenders, all geared toward helping its army of small and medium-sized enterprises flourish. 

This year, the award for Asia’s best bank for SMEs goes to UOB. The Wee family-run lender is cautious and conservative, values coveted by small businesses, particularly during troubling times like these. 

Though the coronavirus appears to be slowly ebbing in Asia, smaller firms face a hard year or two ahead and support from their primary lenders is crucial. 

In an interview with Euromoney in July 2019, UOB chief executive Wee Ee Cheong said the bank’s private-sector roots led it to focus on SMEs, noting that “the DNA of UOB is small and medium-sized customers.”

In total, UOB reckons it banks 274,000 SME clients scattered across Asia – and its regional reach continues to grow. Last year it opened a new branch in the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, and its seventh office in the Greater Bay Area region straddling Hong Kong and Guangdong province in the transport hub of Zhongshan.