Allica Bank’s Conrad Ford Discusses The Core Products Banks Should Offer SMEs

Conrad Ford, Chief Product & Strategy Officer at Allica Bank, sits down with FF News’ Ali Paterson for a discussion about the SME banking sector. Specifically, Conrad talks about the products that financial institutions should be offering SMEs and reveals the methods that modern institutions typically use when delivering financial products to SME customers.

“The question to answer first is do you specialize or do you offer general banking services? So, you can offer a specialist banking service to a particular sector, like agriculture, or a particular customer type such as e-commerce. You can also focus on products, there are many specialist banks that are very much just focused on lending and the only contact they have with SMEs is lending.”

“At Allica we’re a bit different in that respect in that we’ve chosen to build a full-service bank. In other words, we are building a genuine alternative to the big High Street Banks. That means we have a wide variety of lending products, all the way from lending secure on commercial property buildings to working capital needs. That’s the lending side and to be a full-service bank, you need that range. On the other side, you’ve got your current account needs, payments needs and savings needs. Savings is really moving on to the agenda as we move into a normal interest rate environment.”