Scotia pleased with growth of small business lending facility

Marketing Manager Jennifer Cipriani

“Several thousand” local small business enterprises continue to benefit from the package of products and services available under Scotiabank’s small business lending programme, Manager Marketing Jennifer Cipriani told Stabroek Business in an interview earlier this week. Scotiabank, Cipriani says, is “very pleased with the response to its small business banking launched in February 2010.” And while issues associated with risk management and delinquency have arisen in public discourse on commercial bank lending for small business financing Cipriani  said that the bank has had “no major delinquency problems” as far as its small business lending regime is concerned.

Scotiabank’s small business lending facility, according to Cipriani, was open to business enterprises that generate around at least about $120,000.00 per month. “It is a small business lending facility not one that caters for micro-enterprises,” she explained.

Cipriani explained that while the formal launch of the bank’s small business lending programme took place more than two years ago, lending for modest business projects had been available through the