BPB successfully concludes the second cycle of the “Business Academies”

Banka per Biznes has successfully completed the second cycle of the “Business Academies”. Together with partners of the bank, a panel was organized where the results of the Academies for these two years were discussed and their further development.

Banka për Business today hosted its partners at the closing ceremony of the Business Academies, which BPB has organized for two years in a row.

In his introductory speech to the attendees, Adonis Bllacaku, Head of the Retail and Marketing Department at BPB, said that the second cycle of Business Academies has already been completed in seven municipalities of Kosovo where many clients have benefited from this non-financial service that is a an innovative concept developed by the bank for its clients.

“It’s been two years and we’ve had a very successful journey, with many positive results. When we started the project, the conversations we had, the plans and difficulties we encountered and what we wanted to do with this program in the first phase, was something we thought was impossible, but, with the help of our strategic partners, I think we overcame all the challenges and had a very good result”, said Bllacaku. Acting Chief Executive of BPB, Artan Sadiku said meanwhile that BPB continuously shows that it is the main door of small and medium businesses in Kosovo.”The goal of BPB has been to offer, in addition to financial services, non-financial services which have emerged as a need from our internal research that we have organized with all the business clients of the bank. From the research we have seen that some of the challenges that arise for kosovar businesses are not only access to finance, but also strategic positioning, the marketing plan, the preparation of financial statements, etc. As a derivative of the challenges that have emerged from our research, we as the bank have organized these academies for the second year in a row, together with our consultants from Turkey, and we are very happy that today we are concluding this ceremony together with our partners”, said Mr. Sadiku He also spoke about BPB’s plans for the expansion of non-financial services offered to customers, like the launching of the “Business Portal”, which will serve as an everyday online consultant for customers, where important information about the best practices of doing business will be published. U.D. Chief Executive Officer, Artan Sadiku said that he is proud that precisely because of the Business Academies, BPB has been awarded the “Silver” award in the “Financier of the Year” category by the SME Finance Forum. Leonora Kusari from the EBRD spoke about the positive cooperation with BPB, also mentioning the program Youth in Business “I am very happy to be here, especially with a partner like BPB, with whom we share the same mission and goals. EBRD has always valued, apart from access to financial services, also the availability of nonfinancial services through different counselling strategies so that there’s benefits to the capacity of doing business for the MSME’s. It is precisely here that our goals intertwine with those of BPB, especially on these last academies where we have together introduced social media training for the paricipants’’ said Mrs. Kusari. Adnan Sahsuvar, from “GURU Academy” Turkey, has said that providing such non-financial services give birth to new ideas within your customers, helping them to grow in their markets in a healthy and sustainable way and this is positive for both parties. Mr. Sahsuvar also led the panel where it was talked about how the academies will be developed in the next round. The panel was attended by Artan Sadiku, Acting Chief Executive of BPB, Venera Agani from the Central Bank of Kosovo, Besnik Berisha from KCGF, Neil Taylor from EBRD and Venera Hoxha from EFSE. Alike last year, the Business Academies were organized in the seven largest cities of Kosovo, where hundreds of businesses participated.