Kota Kinabalu, Friday, 22 October 2010:- At the first ever SME Seminar organized by The Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM) together with Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp) and Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad (CGC) in conjunction with Minggu Kesedaran Kewangan (M2K) in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, ABM announced several initiatives in collaboration with its member banks in support of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Code-named “PARTNER”, these initiatives are aimed at enhancing banking efficiency and customer services and are broadly based on comments and feedback of SMEs and SME organizations arising from the series of nationwide dialogues under the banner “Sesi Berinteraksi Bersama Organisasi Perniagaan” held in recent months. This first phase of the initiatives focuses on streamlining and simplifying the processes and procedures of applications for a SME loan.

Chuah Mei Lin, the Executive Director of ABM, explains that the initiatives under Phase 1 would provide SMEs with –

1. a simple loan application form which they can use in the event the bank they wish to approach does not have its own.
2. two checklists of documents, the first detailing the general types of documents or information required to be submitted with any loan application and the second, setting out the more specific documents or information required for various kinds of loans or facilities.
3. explanatory notes and guidelines as to how to use the application form and checklists.
4. a timeline depicting the stages involved in the processing of straightforward loan applications and the time expected for each of the stages.
5. the SME contact points of all participating commercial banks so that SMEs are better informed as to who they can look to at the contact points for advice and enquiries when applying for a loan or facility.

“ABM and its members are committed towards enhancing banking efficiency and customer services for the SMEs. As partners and not merely financiers, we listened and acted accordingly. As a matter of fact, we engaged with a total of 11 relevant trade and business organizations as well as other relevant stakeholders over several rounds of consultative sessions prior to finalizing this set of initiatives to ensure that they will be effective and relevant. We are pleased with the encouraging reaction. Parties agree that this is a good start and the initiatives can be further fine-tuned over time and we are already planning the second set of initiatives to be rolled out,” Chuah added.

Starting from Monday, 1 November 2010, the application form, checklists, timeline and contact points together with the explanatory notes and guidelines can be downloaded from ABM’s website, www.abm.org.my. Participating commercial banks will also be making the package available either on their websites or in hard copy form at their respective SME contact points in an organized manner to be announced. Please look out for individual announcements to be made by the respective banks. SMEs should contact ABM’s toll-free hotline ABMConnect at 1-300-88-9980 from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm, Mondays to Fridays for additional information or for any queries.

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