UniCredit was awarded by the monthly magazine Global Finance as World’s Best Bank for SMEs 2020 in the context of World’s Best Global Banks Awards 2020.
“A leader among international financial institutions – explains the reasons for receiving the award, which were released yesterday – using guarantee funds to finance small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), disbursing more than $3.5 billion to 20,000 businesses last year, UniCredit is 2020 Best SME Bank. This past summer, it entered into a Covid-19 support package offered by the European Investment Fund (EIF), allowing the bank to provide working capital loans to SMEs in Central and Eastern Europe guaranteed at a rate of 80% under simplified eligibility criteria. UniCredit is using the package to provide sup- port for companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia. Also this year, UniCredit and the European EIF, part of the European Investment Bank Group, agreed to provide $237 million each in financing to support the digitization of Italian SMEs. And in June, UniCredit signed the first $18 million tranche of financing to help SMEs in Serbia improve the social impact of their businesses.”
Receiving the award, Olivier Khayat, Co-CEO of Commercial Banking Western Europe, UniCredit, said: “We are very proud of this acknowledgement that recognizes the outstanding commitment and dedication demonstrated by our team in providing continuous support to our SME clients – the backbone of the European economy. As a simple successful pan-European Commercial Bank, we provide SMEs with unique access to Western, Central and Eastern European markets, as well as the US and Asia and this award reconfirms our strong capability in serving our clients in all the countries we operate. We are proud to be the “go-to” bank for small and mid-sized companies thanks to our enhanced service model”.
Gianfranco Bisagni, Co-CEO Commercial Banking CEE, UniCredit, added: “We have an incumbent advantage thanks to our long established presence, a single group-wide client model leveraging on our unique pan-European commercial network, a full range of corporate offering, with a fully plugged-in CIB and an enhanced customer experience thanks to value added services. We are engaging in decisive, concrete measures to support companies and pledge our full support to the real economy, offering continued support to businesses through different initiatives along all entrepreneurial challenges SMEs face, with tailor-made solutions for all customer needs. We want to congratulate all our colleagues who have contributed to this success. Our business strives for customer service excellence, we continue to build on our existing competitive advantages, to strengthen our existing relationships and constantly invest in new technologies to meet evolving client needs”.
Winners were selected by Global Finance based on performance over the past year and other criteria including reputation and management excellence, after extensive consultations with corporate financial executives, analysts and bankers throughout the world.
Milano, October 8, 2020