IPDC to give collateral-free loans to outsourcing sector

IPDC Finance Limited, the first ever private sector financial institution in Bangladesh, will issue collateral-free loans for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry.

As an initiative to facilitate the expansion of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) financing, IPDC has inked a contract with the Bangladesh Association of Call Centre and Outsourcing (Bacco).

Under this contract, the loan processing fee and interest rate will be 25 percent and 0.5 percent lesser respectively for the Bacco members.

Mominul Islam, managing director and chief executive officer of IPDC, and Wahidur Rahman Sharif, president of Bacco, formally launched the collaboration through a virtual press meet on Sunday.

Speaking as the chief guest, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for the information and communication technology division, said the initiative will help the SMEs face the economic fallout brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

"IPDC has paved a way to mitigate the distance between BPO industry and financing companies. It will also ease the financing process for new entrepreneurs in this sector," Palak added.

He said a cyber-security help desk will be set up this year to help private call centres. 

Mominul said the IPDC is fully aware of the potential Bangladesh's BPO industry has globally.

"Thus we have decided to form a collaboration with Bacco to provide customer-centric and bureaucracy-free financial solutions for its members and allow them to grow their businesses to its true potential," he added.

Wahidur said Bacco has always been working to uphold the opportunities for its member organisations and will continue to work for the development of the BPO industry by taking certain initiatives in the future.

"Bacco is grateful to IPDC for pledging to help its members with essential financial solutions," he added.

Rizwan Dawood Shams, deputy managing director of IPDC; Aleya R Ikbal, head of IT and business transformation of IPDC; Tanvir Ibrahim, vice-president of Bacco; and Towhid Hossain, secretary general of Bacco, also spoke at the programme.

They said the partnership will enable easy access to finance for small and medium enterprises, who will be able to avail term loan, lease finance and Joyee (women entrepreneur loan), with a discounted processing fee and lower interest rate.

The Bacco members will also receive financing through supply chain financing, such as work order finance and factoring, with benefits like no collateral, discounted processing fee and lower interest rate to strengthen the supply chain financing management for the members.

By providing invoice financing for the working capital support and other financing facilities for the members, IPDC will be improving cash flow and efficiency with which they operate their supply chain management.

Bacco and IPDC will also work together to implement the block chain platform and other digital platforms by IPDC among the members of Bacco to digitise the financing process.