Renaissance, SME Banking 3.0: Digitise, Monetize and Grow

European banks have long been ambivalent to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but now that these businesses contribute around 12% of their total annual revenues, things are beginning to change. In fact, as the SME segment has potential for high growth over the next five years, 80% of European banks will make it a key priority in 2018 and beyond.  

First held in 2004, the annual Efma SME Banking Summit has become a must-attend annual event that focuses on the challenges facing SMEs in the evolving retail financial services landscape. From 13-14 June 2018, the 2018 summit in Paris will provide the perfect platform for Efma’s members to meet SME leaders and work together to define a strategy and roadmap for their SME banking success.

During the event, banks will be able to identify new ways to create segmentation and service models, develop end-to-end processes that redefine the roles of relationship managers (RMs), and discover the types of new products and services – both financial and non-financial – that are valued by SMEs.

Efma’s SME Banking Summit will also look at how banks can use Alibaba’s ecosystem example – it’s not about using Alibaba as a partner, but about their ecosystem as an inspiration for SME Bankers as a growth engine to introduce new services into their value propositions. These could include procurement, logistics, operations, technology, marketing, sales, payment, financing and more.  

Delegates will also discuss how traditional banks can offer a stronger proposition than fintechs in core areas. Discussions will focus on fully analyzing how fintechs cater to SMEs in a business environment, how banks can digitize operations to improve the customer experience, how they can develop an ecosystem that offers a 360-degree overview of customers so they can increase the number of relevant customer touchpoints.

Sessions at the summit will explore the key areas banks need to focus on if they want to win and retain business from SME clients. Key topics will include: 

• Banking transformation: how to leverage technological breakthroughs in SME banking          
• Using digital channels and artificial intelligence to redefine the role of traditional RMs
• Developing behavioral segmentation methods to better serve SME customers
• The benefits of viewing SME business owners as private and affluent banking customers, and how banks can create cross-functional value propositions, service models and product bundles
• How to create non-financial and value-added services to boost loyalty and create new revenue streams
• Ways to create and monetize intelligent data
• How banks can develop partnerships beyond the banking industry by offering accelerator programs, e-government services and more
• New ideas for client engagement, online tools, e-commerce and more