StanChart tailors to SMEs in India

BEST Read in FireFox Browser.
Get your self 1 to enjoy it.
Visit TOUCHPOINTs Research Reports.
Feel Free to drop a word as your valuable Comment.

Standard Chartered Bank offers a one-stop financial service centre to grab a bite of the lucrative SME business in India.

Standard Chartered Bank is among the latest player to jump onto the bandwagon to cater to small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SME) in India, alongside ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, IDBI Bank and Citibank. StanChart has doubled its exposure to SMEs in 2004/05, to capitalise on returns of between eight to 10 percent in the sector.

To cater to the growing SMEs sector, StanChart has created a virtual SME Banking arm to serve as a one-stop financial service centre for SME customers. Under this unit, customers can have access to term loans, pre-shipment or post-shipment credit, currency risk hedging or personal loans, housing loans or car loans.

Unlike public sector banks which are offering similar services to the SMEs, head of consumer banking at StanChart, Murali M Natrajan, claims that the bank’s services are unique in terms of global reach, speedier service and a wide range of products.

Natrajan explains: “Public sector banks need to tie up with foreign banks in order to do LC, trade, or other transactions. As a global bank, we already have the networks in place. We are also well-known abroad and that is a big advantage to SMEs when they have to deal with customers abroad. The credibility is higher.”

The bank also understands that SMEs desire speedy transactions as any delay may hurt their sales and livelihood. Hence, StanChart has upped its standards in servicing the SMEs.

In addition, he says the bank “tailor makes” a suite of products to suit the needs of the SMEs, from term loans and structured loans to exercising greater flexibility in accepting collateral. StanChart’s ‘relationship managers’ are also at hand to help SMEs make sense of all the products available to them, besides advising their clients to avoid unnecessarily high-risk territories. Natrajan says: “This helps the bank to expand the business, and it helps the clients to mitigate risks.”

Before banks like StanChart offered such services, Indian SMEs had limited access to the capital markets due to limited assets to set as borrowing collateral and a lack of credit information. There was an urgent need for proximity to delivery channels, doorstep banking and a combination of personal and business banking amongst SMEs.

But, the diffusion of trade barriers, constant product innovation and rapid technological improvements has transformed the business operations of SMEs. SMEs now contribute approximately 35 to 40 percent to the Indian GDP, and the overall Indian banking sector advances to SMEs is estimated to be at 38 to 40 percent. This makes SME Banking one of the fastest growing businesses for StanChart in India.

Currently, the bank is focusing on the trading, manufacturing and service sectors, for the industries identified as target segments. It is spreading the word about its SME bank by concentrating its promotions on these segments, by sponsoring and carrying out discussions at the relevant trade forums.

Natrajan says: “We are looking at sunrise segments and segments that are immune to economic ups and downs, which have shown resilience.” He has cited the businesses of making and selling incense sticks which are commonly used in India, or of distributing products to pharmacies, as segments that he would consider to have potential.

Apart from industry segmentation, StanChart has also divided the SME market into several segments based on size. For instance, a smaller SME may need a three-year term loan while a larger one may need working capital, trade, forex, bill clearing and an overdraft facility

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS)

BEST Read in FireFox Browser. Get your self 1 to enjoy it.

Visit TOUCHPOINTs Research Reports.
Feel Free to drop a word as your valuable Comment.
SEPTEMBER 27, 2005

An industry group that for the past six months has been developing a common system for rating software flaws announced last week that its proposed approach is ready for broader testing by vendors, corporations and security researchers.

The Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is designed to replace the proprietary vulnerability rating systems that vendors now use. The standardized system was commissioned in January by the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, a group of 30 companies that advises President Bush.

The participants involved in developing the CVSS include Cisco Systems Inc., Internet Security Systems Inc., Qualys Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University's CERT Coordination Center. The standard is being managed by the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), a not-for-profit organization in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Mike Caudill, chairman of FIRST and a member of Cisco's security response team, said the development of the CVSS is "an attempt to bring some order to the chaos" that currently exists around vulnerability ratings. The standardized approach should help IT managers better prioritize their responses to software flaws by giving them a better idea of the security risks their companies face, Caudill said.

The system uses a scale of 1 to 10 to rate the severity of vulnerabilities and lets users add information that's specific to their IT installations to arrive at a customized risk score.
Cisco has already begun testing the CVSS on its security Web site, Caudill said. And by year's end, Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Qualys plans to start using the new system for rating vulnerabilities as part of its managed security services, said Gerhard Eschelbeck, the company's chief technology officer.

But some issues have to be resolved before the CVSS is ready for broad use, said Jeff Havrilla, vulnerability team leader at CERT. There still needs to be general agreement on all the attributes that have to be considered when rating a flaw's severity and on the semantics for describing the attributes, Havrilla said. He added that tools are needed to automate the scoring process.

The rating system also needs to attract support from other major software vendors, including Microsoft Corp. In a statement sent via e-mail, a Microsoft spokeswoman said that the company has no immediate plans to adopt the CVSS.

"It's still somewhat of a work in progress, but it is an incredibly important effort," said Michael Gavin, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.