Ian leads ITCs advisory assistance to 1,000s of developing country MSMEs to upgrade their financial management skills and find affordable financing and investment to accelerate sustainable and inclusive business growth, value-addition and competitiveness in trade. He has also pioneered strategic enterprise and value chain development approaches with a focus on emerging markets and developing countries.

ITC, in partnership with credit guarantee institutions, bank and non-bank financing providers, is piloting new forms of credit de-risking to match the needs of low-risk, short-term financing segments of MSME borrowing. Through its country field project presence, ITC organises data gathering on MSMEs to match participating financing providers requirements for loan pre-qualification and at the same time briefs lenders on market dynamics and enterprise behaviour to tailor risk/pricing procedure to business segments.

Digitisation is playing a key role in improving the quality continuity of business data gathering, performance monitoring and reporting to render the new approaches to be commercially viable and industry compliant.  ITC is currently developing and testing several cloud/block chain applications for suitability with its beneficiary groups.