State Bank makes SMEConnect the only door to small business loans from 1 November
The central bank's new portal will take every SME financing application for banks and development finance institutions, and show the regulator a live count of who was approved and who was turned away.
From 1 November, a small business owner who wants a loan from any bank or development finance institution in Pakistan will have to apply through one website. The State Bank of Pakistan launched the platform, SMEConnect, on Thursday 29 October, at smeconnect.sbp.org.pk.
“From Nov 1 onwards, all SME financing applications shall be received exclusively through SMEConnect.”
An owner who walks into a branch or opens a lender's own website to ask for a loan will be directed to the portal. The central bank has told banks and development finance institutions to display the SMEConnect link prominently on their websites and to train their SME teams and field staff to guide applicants through it. A tutorial video is on the portal.
What applicants get
Applicants can follow the status of a request in real time, and if a bank rejects an application, the portal shows the reasons. The State Bank describes the portal as a single digital window for loan applications that will make financing more accessible, efficient and transparent, with the aim of improving financial inclusion and supporting entrepreneurship.
Behind the application form, the regulator gets a live dashboard showing how many applications each bank or development finance institution has received, processed, approved, disbursed and rejected, along with totals for the whole industry.
Banks still decide
SMEConnect changes how a request reaches a lender, not whether the lender says yes. Bankers told Dawn that any bank can reject an SME application, and that neither the government nor the central bank can force a private bank to lend to small firms unless it is satisfied with the risk. They described banks as the first protectors of depositors' money, which is why each lender keeps its own say over approvals.
Dawn also reported that financial institutions offered Rs4.9 trillion for treasury bills at an auction a day before the launch, where the government raised Rs1.9 trillion, above its target. Bankers added that the government has offered banks another outlet for their money in the subsidised Prime Minister's Housing Scheme, where investment is larger than in SME lending.
The central bank has been working on the segment for two years. In October 2024 it raised the ceiling for SME financing to as much as Rs500 million, and in June 2025 it put draft prudential regulations for SME financing out for public comment. On 1 November, SMEConnect becomes the only way in.
