Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) are a driving force of economic development, and are key to job creation and GDP growth, both in developed and developing countries. However, mainstream banks, particularly in emerging markets, have typically viewed SMEs as high-risk investments and have shied away from serving these businesses.

And while banks may consider many of these SMEs to be too small or risky, even the fast growth of microfinance has not helped their cause too much because many of them are too large to be effectively financed by microfinance institutions. More SMEs are suffering from this noticeably widening gap, which is called the SME financing gap.