Navin Uttamchandanni (right), president and chief operations officer of Esquire Financing Inc., leads the members of his staff in the opening of Esquire Financial, Inc.’s new office at Pelaez Street, Cebu City. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)
Financial services provider Esquire Financing, Inc. plans to open more branches in the Visayas and Mindanao.
The company opened its first branch in Cebu recently to cater to the small and medium enterprises (SME) sector.
“Our goal is to get to as many SMEs and to help as many SMEs as possible. This is a market space that is underserved or unserved. We aim to fill that big void,” said Navid Uttamchandani, president and chief operations officer.
He said the company’s reach in terms of client base in the Visayas and Mindanao is at five to six percent, with majority or some 60 percent of their clients located in Metro Manila, and the other 34 to 35 percent in the rest of Luzon.
Their newest Cebu branch, located in 148 Residences, has already recorded six releases in its first month of operations. The releases amount to P4 million, with half coming from two outbound sales and the rest coming from inbound sales.
“This is our first hurrah. In our first month, we’ve already recovered our entire set up cost. As we build scale and get more referrals, we can guarantee that the numbers will increase almost exponentially,” Uttamchandani said.
He said they target to increase their client base to at least 8,000 nationwide by 2017 from the current 5,000. Of the current client base, nearly half or 2,300 to 2,400 clients were from 2015 alone.
They are also targeting an accumulated P34 billion in releases by 2017. For this year, the target is to double it current portfolio of P3.2 billion to P6.6 billion or P6.7 billion.
Esquire Financing is a non-collateral, single product business loan provider that focuses on providing SMEs access to capital.
About 996,000 businesses in the country are SMEs. Of this number, only around 20 percent are served by formal banking institutions. This leaves an untapped serviceable market of 80 percent.
As Esquire Financing is not covered by banking policies and regulations, it can provide access to capital and business loans to SMEs more easily.
To apply for a loan with the institution, all businesses would need would be their business permits and a checking account that has been in operation for at least six months. Businesses would also need to be in operation for at least a year.