Commercial International Bank (CIB) – Egypt has celebrated the completion of SME Academy’s fourth round and the graduation of 21 participants.
The SME Academy is designed to invest in selected high potential employees, train and qualify eligible calibers to transform the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into long-term sustainable businesses that support the Bank in achieving its SME goals.
It equips the candidates with the required knowledge of SME lending and develops the necessary core competencies. The graduation ceremony was attended by senior management, including Sherif Samy, CIB’s Chairperson; Hussein Abaza, Chief Executive Officer and Board member; Ahmed Issa, Chief Executive Officer, Retail Banking, and Hanan El-Borollossy, Acting Chief Risk Officer.
“We are both delighted and proud to witness the development of our SME Academy participants. We believe SMEs are the mainstay of any economy, and CIB looks forward to its upcoming SME Academy rounds and its future successful participants,” said Hussein Abaza
Ahmed Issa commented, “CIB is committed to add capacity in the Retail SME unit, We expect to graduate more than 100 SME officers in the coming 12 Months over 3 rounds to support our SME growth plan.”
The training programme’s 4th round began in November 2020 and ended in February 2021. It was conducted online to ensure the safety of all participants and moderators in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The program followed several training modules, including technical and SME lending modules, soft skills, and bank products knowledge. The successful graduates have been allocated to Business Banking Credit Customer Relationship Management and Business Banking Credit Underwriting.
The SME Academy is the main driver for business and risk capacities in the Business Banking unit. Since its launch in 2019, the programme has graduated more than 65 business and risk officers. CIB has further launched several programmes designed for SMEs such as the Growth Segment and the Women in Business Program, falling in line with the Egyptian government and the Central Bank of Egypt’s initiative to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises and businesses
CIB is focused on growing its loans to the SMEs sector to achieve the CBE mandate 25% of loans that should be directed to the SME and microfinance sectors. CIB also recognizes the crucial role of SMEs in green transformation and acknowledges them as key drivers for Egypt’s economic and sustainable growth and the SME academy is part of CIB’s strategic plan to support CBE’s direction to reach mandated goals.
