Striking the right balance between business success and social needs.
That, said Axcel Finance Barbados general manager Ricky Went, was the thinking behind his organisation’s launch in Barbados.
Went voiced the opinion recently when Prime Minister Freundel Stuart addressed a Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry luncheon at Hilton Barbados. Axcel sponsored the event. Axcel is a regional microfinance institution which was recently officially introduced to the Barbados market.
“The heart and soul of our business model, as a microfinance institution, is to strike the right balance between the business aspect and the social needs. We first and foremost look at the client as a human being filled with aspirations and committed to contributing to the economy, with the loan being secondary as a means to facilitate dreams,” Went said.
In presenting the Prime Minister with a token from Axcel Finance, its president and chief executive officer, Sam Rosenberg said that “as a regional player in the microfinance domain, our company has put access to credit at the top of its agenda”.
He stressed that Axcel Finance understood the needs of the market and “strives to meet them daily”. “The company continues to be excited about the success when consumers and small businesses report how they are able to develop and grow,” he said.
During his address, Stuart made an impassioned plea for financial institutions operating in Barbados to facilitate greater and better access to financing for small business and private individuals.
He called on the financial sector to “design a financing/mentoring model that removes the critical bottlenecks encountered both by small and potential entrepreneurs”.
“The average private business person is not expected to be primarily concerned with the benefits that may accrue to society from his decisions. A government, on the other hand, has to consider the social benefits and costs that may accrue from the decisions that it makes and from the options that it exercises,” he said. (SC/PR)
