ICE Service

Build Entrepreneurial Capacity / Bespoke Training

Customers

NatWest, RBS, Coutts, Merchant Bank Ghana, BankWest Australia.

Background

Banks and providers of other financial services world-wide are increasingly aware that as the commercial environment changes in response to global pressures, their future profitability and prosperity lies with the premium small business sector.

New Insights into Enterprise & Entrepreneurship

Over the past 18 years ICE and Associates have worked extensively with the banking community in the UK and overseas developing and delivering the programme ‘Understanding the Entrepeneurial Lifeworld’ to over 4,000 bank managers and decision makers.

The programme addresses four key areas:

1. Raising awareness of the importance of the SME sector to the development of the economy, and therefore increasing the propensity of the financial services sector to turn its attention to it;
2. Deepening understanding of entrepreneurship and the process of development within the independent business to aid recognition of the need for finance, as well as recognising the support required to ensure it adds to the sustainability of an enterprise;
3. Enhancing the competence and ability of bankers to work effectively with small businesses; and
4. Providing insights into the way banks can differentiate themselves from competitors in an important and increasingly crowded marketplace.

Impact

The ‘Understanding the Entrepreneurial Lifeworld’ programme has been attended by over 4,000 bank managers and decision-makers in the UK, Australia, Malta, Ireland, Ghana and Botswana.

“I attended a business bankers course led by Dinah Bennett. In a banking career spanning 12 years, this was by far and away the most useful and enlightening course I had ever attended. The course covered a number of topics which had relevance to me in my role of looking after a number of small and medium-sized business customers at a major high street bank.”, Steve Ellis, NatWest Bank