Union Savings & Loans has officially launched a new service – Union SME Clinic – to offer business solutions to micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs).

Philip Oti-Yeboah, Managing Director of Union Savings & Loans, in an address, said the package formed part of his outfit’s philosophy of successfully combining commercial objectives with a strong development agenda by focusing on segments of the market that lacked the needed attention and expertise from the “regular” financial services sector.

“The mission of Union is to provide rapid and suitable deposit, transaction, and lending services to individuals and businesses through high quality and satisfied employees, and modern technology,” he emphasized.

He mentioned that “we do recognize this gap and our solution is in our specially trained and dedicated Client Relationship Officers (CROs). Every SME gets a relationship officer whose goal is to provide tailored services and capacity development support. But more significantly at the institutional level, Union provides a management capacity building programme – the SME Clinic, to provide holistic business solutions and capacity development.”

According to Mr Oti-Yeboah, available data from the Registrar General indicates that 90% of companies registered are micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME’s).

This target group has been identified as the catalyst for the economic growth of the country as they are a major source of income, employment and business convenience.

Ghana’s private sector consists of approximately 80,000 registered limited liability companies and roughly 220,000 registered partnerships.

While micro enterprises employ up to five employees with fixed assets (excluding realty) not exceeding the value of GHS 20,000.00; small enterprises employ between six and 29 employees with fixed assets not exceeding GHS 200,000.00, and medium enterprises between 30 and 99 employees with fixed assets of up to GHS2 million.

The MD indicated that the concept of business centre is a combination of Business Club and Priority Banking, where participants will be assigned relationship managers and have access to the business centre to transact business.