Finding the right partners to drive small business growth

Over the past year, we’ve spent a lot of time working to understand the small business landscape in South Africa – what do small businesses need, how can they access opportunities to grow, and what are the biggest areas of support that entrepreneurs can leverage to become employers who positively impact the economy?

We’ve partnered with Suits & Sneakers to sponsor the second season of the Small Business Showcase to tick one of those boxes – every business that is featured on the show gains access to a platform that showcases what they do. The more we can share and support these businesses and stories, the more our entrepreneurial ecosystem will grow.

But at Sasfin, our purpose runs much deeper than this.

Our CEO, Michael Sassoon, recently sat down with Mark Sham, the host of the Small Business Showcase, to unpack our values and why we’re focusing on small and mid-sized businesses.

Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem

The answer is simple: The backbone of our economy is business. When businesses are growing, the country grows, but businesses can’t grow in isolation. They need credit, customers, partners, smart solutions and an entire ecosystem working together.

Our own roots as a bank lie in providing credit facilities for small and mid-sized businesses that struggled to access traditional credit facilities.

As Michael explains to Mark, as a bank built for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, we developed solutions that didn’t only look at traditional banking and credit criteria but looked at the person and the business model behind the risk. This allowed us to make good credit decisions, even if the candidate didn’t have the right profile on paper. As our customers grew their businesses and played larger roles in South Africa’s economy, or own role has grown, and today we understand the importance of an entire ecosystem to support business growth.

Yes, credit is important, but so are digital solutions that transcend the current operating environment.

Connections that make a difference

Traditionally, banking has been at the centre of economic activity, connecting people who have wealth and who want to grow it, with businesses who need credit to grow.

Today, we need to be more than that. At Sasfin, we see ourselves as the intersection of interesting people, ideas, opportunities, and changing technology – a full spectrum of the economy and its people.

In a post-Covid-19 world, we’ve never taken this role more seriously – or been more excited by the opportunities in our rapidly changing and accelerating world.

South African grit and innovation continues to astound and motivate us, and we’re excited to have you on this journey with us.

Click below to watch the full video and join the conversation and ecosystem that we’re building to support South Africa’s economic growth.