SME Banking & Lending Strategy
Profitably bank Africa's small business engine — credit, products, and digital channels.
The executive challenge
The problem this program solves
Growth in sme banking keeps arriving through channels the institution does not fully control — and supervision is asking questions your reporting cannot yet answer. Every partnership signed without governance economics becomes a renegotiation you conduct from weakness. In five days you rebuild the sme banking decision: value chains priced, scenarios stressed, partnerships structured, and a board-grade agenda sequenced.
Context
Why this matters now
Capability
What you will be able to do
- Read the economics of sme banking like an operator: unit costs, network effects and risk-adjusted return.
- Sequence a sme banking transformation agenda that a board will fund and a regulator will endorse.
- Price and negotiate sme banking partnerships with governance that protects the institution.
- Structure sme banking products, pricing and partnerships that survive regulatory and competitive stress.
The IPAT Course Standard
The five-day journey
Each day is a deliberate progression in managerial capability — from strategic context, to analytical frameworks, to applied practice, to executive judgement under pressure, to a capstone that produces something your organisation keeps.
IPAT Signature Case™
Deposits Leave at the Speed of a Rumour
A viral post questions a regional microfinance group’s solvency. The institution is sound, but its deposit base is concentrated and its app is the third-slowest in the market. By morning, the interbank line has tightened.
Your decision: Set the 72-hour posture — liquidity, communication and regulator engagement — with incomplete information about how far the run goes.
IPAT Data Lab™
A a mobile-money platform cannot see where its book is quietly deteriorating.
Dataset: Synthetic loan-book panel for a mobile-money platform: 80,000 facilities across segments with vintage and behaviour data.
Your task: Segment the portfolio, find concentration and deterioration, and design the repricing and workout response.
A portfolio decision pack presented to the faculty credit committee.
Data → Analysis → Decision, not Data → Code → Certificate
Day 5 · The Capstone
What will you change when you return to work?
Produce a digital finance transformation strategy for your institution: where to play, what to own, which partnerships, and the regulatory posture required.
Methodology
Frameworks you will master
- • IPAT Decision Intelligence Framework™
- • IPAT Transformation Architecture™
- • Value-chain decomposition
- • Risk-adjusted performance measurement (RAROC)
- • Basel-aligned capital and liquidity concepts
Cohorts
Upcoming cohorts
New dates are being scheduled
Register with your preferred start date and our admissions team will match you to the next available cohort — or contact us to arrange an in-house delivery for your organisation.
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