Banks and SMES: Raising the Game: 4th Regional Survey in Latin America and the Caribbean

SMEs are positioning themselves as a strategic branch of banking operations in the region, while banks are increasingly pushing for more active policies when it comes to the financing of SMEs. This is one of the highlighted conclusions from a 2011 joint survey conducted by the Inter-American Development Bank Group's entities dealing with the private sector: the Multilateral Investment Fund (FOMIN), the beyondBanking program of the department of Corporate and Structured Financing (SCF), and the Inter-American Investment Corporation, along with the Latin American Banking Federation (FELABAN). This report introduces the general results obtained during the fourth survey encompassing the views and opinions of directors, managers and deputies of the SME division of 109 banks scattered across 22 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It also includes an itemized analysis of the answers divided by the banks size and location, as well as their interrelations with other trends in that sector.