As small businesses continue to battle to remain sustainable past the two-year mark, First National Bank (FNB) aims to ease at least some of the constraints facing the sector, which has been described as a “hotbed” of job creation.

FNB Business Value Adds head Sanjeev Orie said last week that South Africans were “very” entrepreneurial, but that their attrition rates remained high, with some 40% of small, medium-sized and microenterprises (SMMEs) shutting their doors within two years.

Economic Outlook Discussing South Africa’s entrepreneurial landscape at an economic outlook briefing, he said that, in relation to FNB clients, around 30 000 Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) registrations were recorded each month, along with about 30 000 sole proprietors, while businesses run through a personal bank account totalled about 10 000 a month and 5 000 informal or township businesses were recorded.

However, nearly half fizzled out and the cost of the first failure could make the entrepreneur hesitant to try again, despite the trend that most successful entrepreneurs only become successful on the third or fourth attempt, after applying all the lessons learnt in the early stages.

To ease the path for SMMEs, FNB has teamed up with several strategic partners to pilot initiatives to reduce administrative and regulatory constraints and support business efficiencies.

One such initiative is ‘Instant BEE’ – an integrated solution developed by FNB and verification agency Empowerdex to help businesses plan, adjust and grow in line with black-economic-empowerment (BEE) regulations.

The tool, which allows businesses of all sizes to determine and improve their BEE ratings, eliminates the administrative burdens of BEE compliance and assists companies in navigating the requirements through scorecard, scenario planning, documentation storage and verification services.

customers will also gain access to FNB’s Business Directory, where a business can be promoted to FNB clients without charge.

Further, in partnership with the CIPC, FNB launched a revamped online platform last week to enable a more seamless company registration process and name reservation, with a redesigned customer user interface and payment integration and BEE certificate applications.