The government's commitment to helping make the SME lending sector more competitive, through its funding of the Australian Business Securitisation Fund, is a "small investment" that lenders will not be able to rely on.IFM Investors' director of debt investments, Lillian Nunez, said she was supportive of the move and thought it would provide a bit of competition.But she said A$2 billion was a small investment in a sector that generally lacks investor support.Nunez was a speaker at yesterday's AltFi Australasia Summit in Sydney, participating in a funding panel.Another participant, Prospa's head of group capital management Raj Bhat, said the initiative was welcome recognition of the issues the sector faces and it may bring down costs."If we are eligible to get into the program we will look at it but we will not rely on it," Bhat said.The chief risk officer at Get Capital, David Hurford, said it would increase liquidity and competition.Cameron Smith, senior vice president at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, said the establishment of the ABSF may attract more banks into the sector. The ABSF will invest in securities issued by warehouses and special purpose vehicles, with the aim of supporting the ability of small lenders to grow and provide credit to underserviced segments of the SME market.The government has committed A$2 billion to the scheme, which will be credited to the fund over four years. The first payment into the fund will be $250 million, to be made on 1 July.The Australian Office of Financial Management will manage the fund. The money will be used to invest in securities backed by SME loans.The underlying credit provided to each business must be provided predominantly for business purposes and be less than $5 million. The law allows for other criteria and limitations to be set, depending on how the market develops.In an operational notice last week, the AOFM said it was developing a set of principles to act as assessment criteria against which investment proposals would be evaluated. These principles will be released by May at the latest.The AOFM said the fund would only be investing in securities backed by SME loans originated from the date of issue of the operational notice (April 11).