Taking stock of the year as a whole, 2025 confirms what previous analyses suggested: Serbia’s banking sector is highly profitable, well-capitalised, liquid and stable — which is unambiguously good news. However, the indicators also point to a structural gap between the profit potential of the banks and their effect on the real economy, since high profitability and an exceptionally healthy sector do not automatically translate into a high degree of financing availability for businesses, and even less so once the criteria of tenor and type of financing are factored in. Credit expansion, in terms of its structure, is far from closing the gap between the needs of SMEs and the agri-sector for long-term and investment financing on one hand, and the portfolio profile that banks prefer on the other. The sector is increasingly successful at generating income within a very narrow band of the highest-quality market segments, while the penetration and availability of financing as fuel for economic development remains very low. The fact that 0,6% of enterprises by number absorb almost 40% of all corporate lending is not in itself an anomaly — large enterprises carry larger projects and larger volumes — but it is to a considerable degree driven by persistent structural inhibitors to lending in the SME segment. Among these, perceived risk and collateral requirements are arguably the most significant, but a lack of diversification and specialisation in support provision is also a contributing factor. Both research and practice confirm that segments such as women-led businesses, youth-owned enterprises, rural businesses and social enterprises are clearly defined and structurally underfinanced segments whose risk profile is considerably better than dominant assessment models suggest. In that context, although the main business support programmes realised through the Development Fund (FZR), KfW, EBRD, EIB and other credit lines and EU grants — which are examined regularly in the editions of Private Briefing — remain a significant mechanism seeking to compensate for what market logic alone does not provide, a systemic response to the identified imbalance, in the form of a tectonic reorientation of financing flows towards the real economy, is still awaited. Support programmes, particularly those that combine a financial component with non-financial services, are also proving important for strengthening demand-side capacities — that is, the ability of enterprises to prepare, present, finance and implement sustainable projects. The Social Impact Finance initiatives that we monitor and participate in have already built part of the infrastructure for the financial implementation of the next generation of credit instruments, grounded in incentives and very concrete, measurable social impact indicators spanning a range of inclusion dimensions for young people, women and other groups with traditionally limited participation in the labour market. On the other side of the equation, the “green” aspects of lending — introduced long ago — have moved from the domain of creating “savings-based benefits” for borrowers into the domain of obligation, with a growing body of regulation that now effectively levies penalties on emissions and prices in energy inefficiency. In this way, both the “E” and the “S” of ESG have become part of the market reality of both the real and the financial sector.