During the Global SME Finance Forum 2018, Hans Docter, Director for Sustainable Economic Development, at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, discussed the role innovation plays in respect to mobilizing more finance for SMEs.
Hans Docter said, “Millions of small businesses are not getting the finance they need [and] in order to deliver services to them, we need to be innovative, try new approaches and use digital technology to come up with smart solutions.”
Additionally, Docter was impressed by the fintech innovations presented at this year’s Forum. He believes fintech opportunities will drive growth for SMEs in a major way. “In the last couple of days, I’ve seen incredible examples of that when you scale them, [you’ll] allow more finance to SMEs at [a] much lower cost [and] with much less hassle. That’s a really exciting vision for the future that we’ve seen here at the Forum this year.”
More than 600 attendees represented 208 institutions and 80 countries at the Forum. See event highlights, testimonials, other expert interviews, 13 TechPitches, session presentations and a recap of the Study Tour to 12 innovative financial institutions on the event website: https://globalsmefinanceforum.org/2018/
