Downscaling: Advisory Services in the course of a SME credit line to three commercial banks

In 2002, LFS was commissioned by KfW to support three Kazakh banks in their MSME finance activities. The partner banks had previously received a credit line, to increase their ability to grant medium and long-term investment loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In the course of this programme, some shortcomings in the economic and financial assessment of loan applications became evident.

LFS provided consulting services to the three banks, in order to allign their procedures and processes with best practice standards. The services included, among others:

• Extensive training of loan officers
• Review of loan assessment procedures
• Improvement of the internal and external reporting and loan monitoring practices
• Intensification of the banks' product marketing