Small business accounts ‒ widely regarded as a source of stable deposits, loans, and fee income ‒ have long been a cornerstone for many community and regional banks. Yet only 29% of businesses feel their bank truly understands their specific needs.
Looking at the small business landscape, it’s no surprise: Some small businesses run under the radar, using their bank’s retail banking services and popular money movement apps to get the basics done. Others are shoehorned into a high-powered cash or treasury management system, adding complexity and overengineering to the solutions they really need.
On the flip side, larger businesses have traditionally been served by the biggest banks or specialized commercial institutions. They’ve been less likely to retain relationships with their local community institutions as they chase digital features and functionality that are often missing at smaller banks.
The result is that community and regional financial institutions tend to lose out on opportunities to serve larger business customers, or lose relationships as businesses “outgrow” their bank.
But it doesn’t need to be that way.
Serving Your Niche
To realize the full benefits of serving business banking relationships, it’s important first to determine who you want to serve to meet your bank’s goals. Are you happy serving the lower end of the SMB market, or are you interested in reaching medium to large commercial clients? Once you know your target market, you can build your business banking tech stack accordingly.
It’s all about offering a tailored experience that meets the unique needs of your business customers.
For the smallest businesses, the experience should offer more sophistication than merely a retail experience while remaining easy to use. This should be true whether the business user chooses to access services via an online browser or a mobile app. The key lies in walking the fine line between offering the options that a small or micro business needs and giving them too much complexity.
When it comes to the more established small-to-medium businesses, it’s all about offering the breadth of features they expect and need through an interface that’s user-friendly and designed for smaller volumes of transactions and less complex workflows. After all, how many five-person businesses want or need three approvals on a wire transfer?
You can also stand out by offering external account aggregation. This creates a financial hub where the business user can see their account balances across any and all of their banking relationships. An even bigger benefit is the ability to categorize transactions and create a better view on where the money is being spent in support of the ongoing operations of the business.
Last, but certainly not least, are the largest businesses and municipalities that require advanced business banking and treasury management functionality. To attract and retain these relationships, you’ll want to offer a treasury solution that’s built specifically to handle high volumes of transactions, can easily handle imports or integrations with accounting solutions, and is designed to offer a variety of complex and customizable workflows, reporting, and dashboards for the company’s different business banking end users.
You might even look for a solution that offers your largest clients a progressive web app for their mobile experience, rather than a natively built app that requires frequent downloads when new features or updates are made. Progressive web apps are especially helpful and relevant to the largest treasury banking market ‒ specifically, the largest businesses that require consistency, less downtime, and availability on any device.
Delivering Holistically
As you consider whether you have the right business banking services to meet the needs of your current and target market, take time to consult with your sales and support teams to identify areas of friction and gaps in functionality or even knowledge. Are there common complaints about missing functionality? Confusion over too-complex interfaces? A lack of in-house knowledge about advanced treasury management techniques for larger businesses?
By taking time to step back, you’ll uncover truths that can help you plan more effectively to reach your business banking goals. Whether you find gaps in technology, training opportunities for your internal support teams, or even the need for a new commercial banker with expertise in the niche market you wish to pursue, having these deeper discussions will help your team provide the tailored experiences your business customers want and deserve.
Interested in learning more about how tailored digital solutions can work together to help you meet your business banking goals? Reach out to our Digital Experience team today.
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