Small Business Development Center was set up by SKB-Bank in Yekaterinburg about a year ago; it was then seen as a special bank office where businesspeople could use the entire range of financial and accompanying non-financial services in the field of accounting, taxation, legal advice, and so on.

'The Center’s performance can be characterized as rather impressive: not only did the bank’s client database doubled, but the number of customers our partner companies obtained went up as well,’ SKB-Bank’s Small and Medium-Scale Business Loans Director Irina Kuzmina says.

SKB-Bank decided to celebrate the Center’s first anniversary by raising the maximum amount of money one can get in the form of an unsecured loan up to 1 million RUR.

‘Having a separate center devoted to support of small business in Yekaterinburg is definitely worth the while. SKB-Bank is about to set up similar centers in other Russian cities and will probably begin with Volgograd,’ Ms Kuzmina added.