09 October 2020

Global Finance has selected UniCredit as one of the winners of the World’s Best Global Banks Awards, based on performance over the past year and criteria including reputation and management excellence

2:00 Min

UniCredit has been recognised as the Best Bank for SMEs in 2020 according to the monthly magazine Global Finance. This award is a testament to the bank’s strong commitment to supporting its customers.

In a note explaining the reasons for the award, UniCredit was described as “a leader among international financial institutions” and praised for “using guarantee funds to finance small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), disbursing more than $3.5 billion to 20,000 businesses last year.”

The note continued: “This past summer, the bank entered into a Covid-19 support package offered by the European Investment Fund (EIF), allowing it 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 support 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 digitisation of Italian SMEs. Furthermore in June, UniCredit signed the first $18 million tranche of financing to help SMEs in Serbia improve the social impact of their businesses.”

Commenting on the award, Olivier Khayat, Co-CEO of Commercial Banking Western Europe and Gianfranco Bisagni, Co-CEO of Commercial Banking CEE at UniCredit said: “We are very proud of this acknowledgement that recognises 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.”