OREANDA-NEWS. July 12, 2012. Sberbank's portfolio of unsecured Trust loans for small businesses exceeded 53 bn. rubles, adding almost 100 % since start of the year. Currently, there are about 91,000 agreements in effect with loans granted to about 75,000 borrowers. The maximum principal for this product is 3 mln. RUB, reported the press-centre of Sberbank.   

"The Trust loan is granted within the Credit Factory technology. Decisions made so fast and the volume of the offering allow us to grant one loan a minute. About 65 % applications get approved now. In the future we plan to improve our screening technology to increase this figure," – said Sergey Borisov, Vice-President for Development of Small Business of Sberbank.

As of April 1, 2012, Sberbank's loan portfolio in the segment of small and micro business amounted to 677 bn. rubles, over 150,000 agreements were made. Pursuing its methodology, Sberbank treats companies with staff numbers under 100 as small enterprises, the micro business segment is represented by firms with staff numbers under 15 people.

Currently, Sberbank is preparing to launch a new program for entrepreneurs – Business Environment. Business Environment is a unique group of projects intended to create a new end-to-end technological infrastructure for Russian businesses. The program's main projects include a school of distance business learning, remote sales of banking products and services, an online shop, a trusted social network which is poised to become a new authoritative media.

"Using Sberbank's services, our clients can manage their company and personnel online, interact with the government, improve their qualifications, purchase software and information products on preferential terms, seek partners and goods, make transactions and many other things," – Andrei Leushev, General Director of Delovaya Sreda CJSC, noted.

Delovaya Sreda will be represented on its on stand at the All-Russian Youth Forum Seliger-2012 launched on July 2 (the Entrepreneurship shift). Over 300 businesspeople visited Sberbank's forum site in two days. 50 of them expressed an interest in Sberbank's specific services and turn-key solutions for business (the Business Start loan product).