Business

Tuesday October 13, 2009

SME Credit Bureau teams up with Maxis


KUALA LUMPUR: SME Credit Bureau (M) Sdn Bhd and Maxis Communications Bhd have entered into a strategic partnership to enhance operations and to speed up approval of small and medium-scale enterprises’ (SMEs) applications to Maxis for telecommunications facilities.

Chief executive officer Alex Lim said the bureau would provide Maxis with comprehensive business review reports on its existing customer base and undertake credit evaluation on new SME applicants.

The business review reports, which include risk ratings, are aimed at providing Maxis with an effective tool to determine the risk profile of new SME applicants in a timely manner and improve turnaround time of the overall approval process.

“We are confident that the reports to be generated for Maxis will help speed up approval of applicants for telecommunications facilities,” Lim said at the memorandum of understanding signing ceremony between SME Credit Bureau and Maxis. Vice-president and head of enterprise and carrier business division, Mohamed Fitri Abdullah, said Maxis would in return submit trade data on its SME customers to the bureau on a monthly basis.

He stressed that Maxis would get customers’ consent before sending out any data to the bureau. To a question, Fitri said the partnership would enable the mobile operator to speed up approvals for new SME clients by 25% to 30%. He said the approval process normally took two to three working days.

The bureau, which has a database of over 600,000 SMEs, is expected to start generating business review reports for Maxis next month and receive trade data from Maxis in December.

Lim said the credit information from Maxis, which was not available elsewhere, would add another dimension to the payment behaviour of SMEs.

He added that the data contributed by Maxis would further expand its database.

“Financial institutions offering financing facilities, and companies giving out credit lines will have access to a bigger database, as well as a more balanced view on the track record of SMEs,” he added.

To a question, Fitri said he believed the partnership would help Maxis reduce its bad debt ratio. However, he declined to reveal its current ratio.

“Our bad debt ratio is below our target and it’s at a healthy position,” he said, adding that SMEs were a big contributor to its business.

Fitri said Maxis would be launching its new solution – unified communications for SMEs – next month. For a start, it will introduce two services under the solution and more within three months.

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