MSMEs need upskilling, financial literacy – forum

FINANCIAL literacy and continuous learning are key drivers of business success, according to speakers during Thursday's micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and start-ups forum organized by The Manila Times.

SB Finance President and CEO Abbie Casanova said 60 percent of businesses in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) region fail. However, the rate of success goes up by 30 percent among financially literate enterprises.

"Financial education is a strategic investment not only for us — because this is our business, we are in the lending business — but also for borrowers, investors and people who want to save and put a nest egg, or put in an emergency fund," Casanova explained.

The book "Utang Manual" — a collaboration with ANC Business Outlook host Salve Duplito — taught SB Finance employees everything they needed to know about financial literacy.

Incorporating digitalization, SB Finance created a financial literacy quiz to assess how much a client knows about responsible borrowing.

"We do not just lend, we want to make sure that we empower our borrowers and give them the right financial knowledge so they can make the right financial decisions," Casanova said.

eCloudValley Philippines country head Bernard Chua, discussing the strong presence of micro, small and medium enterprises in the Philippines, noted their lack of digital skills.

Partnering with the Philippine government, eCloudValley — a Taiwanese company that specializes in cloud transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) modernization — is providing digital knowledge to MSMEs.

It has authored a cloud computing course with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority.

"We want to empower people, and the notion that says 'cloud capability needs to be very advanced' or 'it needs to be very high-tech and complex,' those are actually not true," Chua said. "We help Filipinos be more competitive. We chose cloud education as the base foundation for technology when AI, data analytics and everything else will sit on it."

In addition, Integrated Micro-Electronics Inc. head of global strategy and corporate ESG Sherwin Nones emphasized the need for upskilling, as well as the need to humanize systems and digitize processes, separating human and digital aspects in business operations.