SME Bank of the Year 2025 nominee: Bradesco
We are introducing the nominees for the SME Bank of the Year award. This category aims to acknowledge and applaud banks that demonstrate exceptional efforts in catering to the requirements of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Bradesco Bank is a Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender. With over 50 years of experience catering to the financial needs of individual, corporate and institutional customers, our products and services have been carefully structured to serve the domestic and international markets, which, combined with our personalized service, ensures that your experience with Bradesco Bank will be unparalleled.
How would you describe your bank’s role in the SMEs business journey considering their importance in the economy?
Companies (SMEs) in Brazil, recognizing their crucial importance to the economy. The main aspects of Bradesco's support for SMEs include:
- Financial Services and Products: Bradesco offers a comprehensive set of banking and financial services tailored to the needs of SMEs, including loans, credit lines and investment options. This helps SMEs manage their finances, invest in growth and face economic challenges.
- Digital Solutions: The bank provides advanced digital banking solutions, ensuring that SMEs have access to their financial needs anytime and anywhere. This includes mobile banking and online platforms that facilitate efficient financial management.
- Innovation and Technology: Bradesco is committed to harnessing technology to improve its services. The bank's innovation hub, Inovabra, drives technological advances and digital transformation in the banking sector, benefiting SMEs with cutting-edge solutions.
- Educational Initiatives: Through initiatives such as the Bradesco Foundation, the bank supports education and training programs that benefit the community at large, including SME owners and employees. This helps build a skilled workforce and fosters entrepreneurial spirit.
- Community and Regional Development: Bradesco's extensive branch network throughout Brazil ensures that even SMEs in remote areas have access to essential banking services. This supports regional economies and helps reduce urban migration by creating local employment opportunities.
By providing these services and support, Bradesco helps SMEs to thrive, contributing to sustainable economic growth and job creation in Brazil.
Why do you think your bank deserves to be awarded the SME Bank of the Year?
- Bradesco should be recognized as Bank of the Year for SMEs due to its long history of solutions for this audience and its efforts to use emerging technologies and innovative solutions to solve everyday problems and deliver solutions that change the core of the business.
- Focus on SMEs: The bank continued to expand its initiatives aimed at SMEs, including the creation of 150 regional platforms dedicated to this segment. These platforms offer greater autonomy and specialized support, facilitating access to personalized financial services.
- Innovation and Digitalization: Bradesco invested heavily in digitalization and technology, hiring thousands of specialized professionals and implementing new relationship systems. This has improved the efficiency and quality of service to SMEs.
- Personalized Products: Bradesco Seguros launched innovative products designed to meet the specific needs of SMEs and MEIs, such as business insurance tailored to the demands of each sector.
Briefly highlight the top three projects or achievements your bank has delivered for SME customers in the past 18 months.
DIGITAL MEI
The financial market's first exclusive and profitable business model for MEI (individual micro-entrepreneur) clients. Although they represent a large part of the SME market (small and medium enterprises), MEI's are generally not prioritized by banks, as they are clients with more basic needs (low revenue potential) and very similar service costs to larger clients, making it impossible to sustain these operations.
The “MEI Digital” business model has solved this equation, creating a 100% digital service model with a focus on self-service (via the app), without losing the humanized contact, especially for the most complex needs. In other words, MEI customers have all their needs met quickly and can focus their time on their core business.
Additionally, we deeply explored the challenges and needs of these clients to redesign the entire value proposition, identifying the key products and services for this audience, with fully digital journeys in the app and an efficient sales method based on these (few) products and services.
The results have been very significant, both from a financial standpoint and in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The recognition came with the bank’s decision to scale this business model, making it one of the key strategic priorities for the business segment.
LENDING AS A SERVICE (LAAS)
LaaS (Lending as a Service) enables the provision of credit products embedded in contextual journeys, facilitating the distribution of Bradesco loans at any time and in any location. This is achieved through strategic partnerships with financial and non-financial ecosystems, with an Invisible Banking technology layer creating a distribution model.
This innovation enables financial and non-financial companies to expand their portfolio with new solutions, earn revenue from the commercialization of credit offers, and increase client and user loyalty on the platform with embedded and whitelabel journeys. All this generates a unique experience for the end client.
With an intuitive journey and few steps, we guarantee efficiency at the time of hiring, and business conditions that are clear and adjustable to the client's current situation, without the requirement to open an account to receive offers and complete the operation.
Key aspects include:
- Assertive Credit Analysis: We use unconventional data and information from partner platforms to offer personalized credit, tailored to the customer's needs and timing.
- 100% Digital Journey: The credit offer is made available digitally and contextually, providing a fluid contracting experience on partner channels.
- Flexibility and Scalability: Our solution is built in a modular way with APIs and whitelabel journeys, guaranteeing flexibility and the ability to scale.
This innovative approach guarantees an efficient and personalized experience for SME customers, boosting their growth and success.
PIX PJ TRANSACTION RETENTION PERCENTAGE REDUCED
We improve the lives of our legal clients by reducing friction in transactions through the use of AI in our anti-fraud system. Through machine learning, our anti-fraud system continuously adapts to user behavior, improving its performance in authorizing transactions. After implementation, we achieved an 80% reduction in friction related to Pix payments and transfers. In addition, when the anti-fraud system detects something out of line with the customer's usual behavior, facial biometrics are requested to confirm that the transaction is being carried out by the company's owner or representative. If the user wishes to proceed with the transfer or payment, they perform facial biometrics.
Find out more:
Visit Bradesco website
Learn more about Bradesco's LaaS (Lending as a service) project
Read about Bradesco launching 'credit as a service' solution for e-commerce, online stores, and ERPs.
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