A Guidance & Empowerment Program that enhances customer capacities

BOGOR, 16 December 2015 – As a bank that is focused and consistent in working with lower-income segments of society including micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) entrepreneurs, as well as productive poor communities (mass market), PT Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional Tbk (SMBCI) believes that mass market customers not only require financial access, but also training and guidance to enhance their business capacities and quality of life.

To realize this, SMBCI has implemented a customer mentoring and empowerment program called Daya. Daya is a training program that is conducted in a measured and sustainable fashion by SMBCI for the benefit of all its customers.

Daya consists of the following three program pillars: Daya Sehat Sejahtera,Daya Tumbuh Usaha, and Daya Tumbuh Komunitas. Daya is integral to each of the SMBCI business units, namely SMBCI Purna Bakti - the business unit focused on serving pensioner customers, SMBCI Mitra Usaha Rakyat(MUR) - the business unit focused on serving micro & small enterprise entrepreneurs, SMBCI Mitra Bisnis - the business unit that serves small & medium enterprise entrepreneurs, as well as SMBCI Sinaya - the funding business unit of SMBCI. Furthermore, Daya is also applied in the SMBCI subsidiary SMBCI Syariah, which focuses on serving productive poor communities.

In order to enhance the quality of the Daya Program, SMBCI joined hands with the Bogor Institute of Agriculture’s School of Business (SB-IPB) to help in compiling a training curriculum which is important for the entrepreneurial development of the bank’s customers. SMBCI and SB-IPB believe that the implementation of the Daya program will enhance the business capacities of customers. Moreover, both parties are eager to lend their full support to micro & small enterprise (MSE) entrepreneurs, as they feel this is important for improving their competitiveness as Indonesia enters the era of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).

“As we take our place in the AEC, it is obviously essential that MSE entrepreneurs enjoy access to education and training so that they can upgrade their entrepreneurial abilities,” said Arief Daryanto, Head of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture’s School of Business (SB-IPB) Post-Graduate Program. In addition, MSE entrepreneurs still need to improve their understanding of financial management as well as their overall managerial capabilities.

Based on the results of SB-IPB research, the obstacles faced by MSE entrepreneurs in developing their businesses include a lack of opportunities for keeping up with developments in technology as well as limited access to markets.

As a token of appreciation for SMBCI customers who took part in all four Daya training modules over a period of a year, SMBCI and IPB once again held a series of customer graduation ceremonies recently. This is second time that SMBCI and IPB made the effort to celebrate the graduation of customers. In 2014, SMBCI staged customer graduation ceremonies in four cities, Palembang, Banjarmasin, Semarang and Bogor, in which 300 customers participated.

“Last year, we only graduated micro enterprise entrepreneurs, whereas this year some of our retiree customers also got to experience the wonderful feeling of graduating,” noted Mulia Salim, Director of SMBCI.

This year, graduation ceremonies were once again organized in four Indonesian cities. This time they took place in Medan (2 December 2015), Makassar (10 December 2015), Kediri (12 December 2015), and Bogor (16 December 2015), with a total of 300 customers taking part.

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