Fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 2023 launch of its nov­el mi­cro-loan prod­uct which tar­gets mi­cro, small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (MSMEs), Re­pub­lic Bank has an­nounced the ear­ly re­sults of its up­take.

In the first five months, Re­pub­lic said it has dis­bursed 520 loans val­ued at TT$40 mil­lion ex­clu­sive­ly in sup­port of its MSME cus­tomers, across a range of sec­tors in­clud­ing agri­cul­ture, per­son­al ser­vices, busi­ness ser­vices and trans­porta­tion.

The new mi­cro-loan prod­uct of­fers at­trac­tive con­ces­sions, in­clud­ing re­laxed qual­i­fy­ing cri­te­ria that al­low small busi­ness­es to ac­cess loans up to $100,000.

A state­ment from the bank said this loan pack­age is tai­lored specif­i­cal­ly for MSMEs as these busi­ness­es of­ten have high po­ten­tial but are some­times over­looked and un­der-served by fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Re­pub­lic al­so not­ed that its MSME mi­cro-loan is an in­no­v­a­tive ad­di­tion to its wider com­mer­cial cam­paign, which in­cludes a suite of dis­count­ed rates and oth­er in­cen­tives for busi­ness­es.

“What sets Re­pub­lic Bank apart is that we don’t on­ly give fi­nanc­ing, but we walk the jour­ney with our cus­tomers by pro­vid­ing fi­nan­cial coun­sel and busi­ness de­vel­op­ment train­ing to ex­pand aware­ness,” Vic Sal­ick­ram, the bank’s vice-pres­i­dent said.

He fur­ther ex­plained that since the cam­paign’s launch, the bank has host­ed quite a few MSME-fo­cused ini­tia­tives, not least among these the Re­pub­lic En­tre­pre­neur­ial Edge pro­gramme and a SME Work­shop and Mar­ket­place which formed a key com­po­nent of a train­ing day at the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Bankers’ AGM and Con­fer­ence.

The bank al­so host­ed an in-house Mar­ket­place for its MSMEs and SMEs to ob­serve Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur­ial Week.

These ini­tia­tives were all un­der­tak­en in an ef­fort to build the busi­ness acu­men of the en­tre­pre­neurs as well as show­case their prod­ucts and ser­vices, Re­pub­lic not­ed.

In ad­di­tion to this, the bank has com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing its staff, who are en­tre­pre­neurs, with pack­ages and of­fers to guide their busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and growth.

Last week, 15 staff mem­bers, to­geth­er with 43 Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs from ter­ri­to­ries across the Re­pub­lic Group grad­u­at­ed from the En­tre­pre­neur Busi­ness Builders pro­gramme. Con­duct­ed by Re­pub­lic Bank in col­lab­o­ra­tion with BPD and As­so­ciates, this train­ing ini­tia­tive aims to bol­ster the sus­tain­abil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty of com­pa­nies led by women en­tre­pre­neurs in the Caribbean.

Not­ing that en­tre­pre­neurs play a vi­tal role to­wards a ro­bust and re­silient econ­o­my, Sal­ick­ram added that Re­pub­lic Bank’s sup­port aligns with its com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ples for re­spon­si­ble bank­ing as the bank con­tin­ues to do its part to move the nee­dle on at­tain­ment of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals in the ter­ri­to­ries in which it op­er­ates.