Investing in small and medium business growth has become a major financial driver for countries around the world, reeling from the impact of the international financial crisis.
The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) recently implemented major changes to the country’s banking regulations with this specific purpose in mind.
However, small- and medium-size enterprises (SME) SMEs still face intense scrutiny and must meet restrictive credit criteria, which often has been prohibitive in their ability to access needed capital.
Alternative approaches to credit lending have emerged and one Egyptian entrepreneur and banking expert Tarek Elsheikh, has led the industry in introducing novel solutions to support lending to businesses that traditionally would be denied critical capital based on conventional banking methodologies.
Elsheikh’s scorecard model fully underwrites the loan in less than a second after minimal data entry, and generates a loan offer that best suits the applicant.
Elsheikh said that the power of data available on the Internet, social media and public or credit report data and aggregated together has transformed the way in which financial institutions approach SME lending.
“With start-up businesses driving the new economy, it will be critical for the financial sector to innovate new lending solutions for companies that will be key to economic growth. Mr. Elsheikh is leading that charge,” Elsheikh added.
He has created innovative solutions for credit underwriting of SMEs, many of which have limited or no past credit history.
