Bank of Baroda ropes in Crisil to widen its reach to SMEs

MUMBAI: State-run Bank of Baroda Thursday signed an agreement with Crisil to assess credit quality of its existing and prospective SME customers.

Under the agreement, the rating agency will assess SMEs by processing and analysing structured, unstructured and new data streams and share it with the bank.

"While Bank of Baroda already has a sizable SME book, post-amalgamation, the share of SMEs in the total loan book would increase significantly.

This tie-up will strengthen the evaluation process of SMEs and enable growth of our loan book," managing director and chief executive PS Jayakumar said in a statement.

Loans to SMEs have grown at around 13 per cent annually over the past decade, accounting for nearly 15 per cent of the total loan book.

SMEs numbering around 6.3 crore, employ over 11 crore people and account for 29 per cent of the GDP and 40 per cent of exports.