EBRD project Belinvestbank Institution Building Programme – Strengthening Capacities for MSME Lending implemented by TA Consult in the Republic of Belarus has been completed. Andrey Brishtelev, Chairman of the Board of Belinvestbank and Jahan Shamsiev, Senior Banker of Financial Institutions Department of the EBRD shared their opinions on the project’s results, uniqueness and specifics.

Andrei Brishtelev, Chairman of the Board, Belinvestbank:

- From the point of view of transformations, we’ve got a completely different business process, a completely different business philosophy aimed at the clients and their comfort. This segment at BIB has grown by almost 30% during this year only. By 2020, the share of micro, small and medium enterprises in the bank’s portfolio is expected to reach 20%. This project was not just unique, but very ambitious. To apply a European business technology adjusted to Belarusian conditions to a large state-owned bank with an extensive territorial network and to build this business practically from scratch was a top level challenge, which had to be addressed by TA Consult team and EBRD representatives over two years.

Jahan Shamsiev, Senior Banker of Financial Institutions Department, EBRD shared his opinion on the MSME sector development in Belarus and the results of the project:

- The goals we set for us were very ambitious. They included among other things the number of loans to be disbursed during the entire period, and the MSME loans amount. A sustainable lending process was to be built by Belinvestbank. The difficulty was that Belinvestbank, like other financial institutions in this sector in Belarus, had had no previous experience in this business segment. We had to build all the procedures from scratch, to train personnel, to adjust MSME lending process to the market specifics, to develop marketing solutions and products, and to deliver them to the market. And we wanted to see specific outputs at the end of the project in terms of the MSME portfolio built, the number of loans disbursed, loan officers trained to work efficiently and independently (without the Consultant’s supervision and assistance). And, as the EBRD Operation Leader for this project, I am very happy to say that the planned benchmarks were exceeded, and some of them even several times.

Read the full interview in Russian here.

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