Small Businesses Keep South Africa’s Economy Stimulated
Hosted by leading business personalities, the Business Day TV SME Summit 2018 was a tremendous success, creating unparalleled networking and growth opportunities for the SME sector. Credit Guarantee’s CEO, Charles Nortje, delivered a key presentation and gave practical insight into getting a measurable return on investment. In Mr Nortje’s interview, he opined on CGIC’s role in collaborating with SMEs to keep the wheels of the South African economy turning.
Charles Nortje: CGIC is a part of the Business Day TV SME Summit 2018, because we play an important role in the SME sector. SMEs are a growth engine of the SA economy. At CGIC, we understand this and want to assist entrepreneurs to grow their businesses without the risk that lies with expansion. We provide peace of mind when dealing with new customers and new markets.
In the South African economy, there are a lot of inequalities, whereby it is difficult for SMEs to compete with large companies on an even footing. So, at CGIC, we take our credit rating and make it available to the SME, so they can transact with large companies on a level playing field. This keeps the wheels of the economy turning and is very important to CGIC.
We insure approximately 10% of South Africa’s total GDP, and through that we help preserve jobs and grow the job market – just some of the higher ideals that we are interested in as a company.
CGIC’s Services For Small and Medium Enterprises
The services we offer are broadly twofold as follows:
- CGIC offers important credit information for SMEs
- SMEs get indemnity with CGIC insurance policies
We’ll dissect each service in more detail.
CGIC offers important credit information for SMEs
Typically, when an SME gets an order, they would need to provide credit terms to the buyer, as it’s seldom that transactions are carried out on a cash basis. However, it is difficult for SMEs to keep their own information of all potential customers/buyers and their payment profiles.
At CGIC, we have a very comprehensive database of SA companies that includes SMEs and large companies. We use this information, to give guidance to our clients on what sort of credit to give to their buyers – the terms and the limits. We support several South African companies that export their goods and services abroad and we keep the information of those customers, thus we have data on 146 countries.
SMEs get indemnity with CGIC insurance policies
If a debt goes bad, and cannot be collected, we provide indemnity and make a payment under the policy to stand in for the bad debt. The SME can use this payment to stabilise their cash flow. We also have a team of experts who are well versed at collection services and assist SMEs in collecting debt.
Get Insurance And Finance At Invoice Level
When an SME has a particular invoice on an order that they want to supply to a new customer, the SME needs to have insurance cover and the money to finance and meet the requirements of that order. Doing this on a one-click basis would be a huge benefit to SMEs because access to capital and peace of mind are two major concerns for them. We are excited to be heading to this in the future.
To partner with a leader in domestic and international trade credit insurance and bonds and surety cover and safeguard yourself against non-payment of your debtors contact Credit Guarantee today.
Credit Guarantee is an authorised Financial Services Provider.
