Small businesses have unique banking needs. As neither consumers nor corporations, what these clients truly desire is for you to provide a feature set that is easy to use and comprehensive to their unique needs.
Over the next few years, the banking industry is predicting alarming attrition rates for small business clients. Nineteen percent of all small businesses and 27 percent of Millennial and Generation Z-run businesses will “definitely” or “probably” switch primary financial institutions, according to a survey conducted by Aite-Novarica and commissioned by Apiture.
Can you afford to lose potentially lucrative commercial customers? If not, what steps can your financial institution take to retain these small business clients and remain their primary institution?
The secret to retaining these customers is to demonstrate the value that your financial institution provides — in areas like convenience, efficiency, and time savings. Today’s business banking platforms must offer intuitive, robust services that allow these users to focus on running their business rather than banking.
In addition, small businesses need more tools and capabilities — for example, international payments — than your primary financial institution may provide, and they require greater information and transaction transparency. In fact, the Aite-Novarica study indicates that 49 percent of survey respondents would like more sophisticated mobile banking capabilities.
Ask yourself if your business banking platform has the capabilities that align with small business expectations, including:
- A banking platform tailored to small business customers with desired functionality and intuitive experiences
- A modern digital interface featuring easily-to-understand terminology rather than complex language more commonly used by large corporations
- Transparency around payments
- Digital account opening capability
- Ability to integrate with best-of-breed third-party solutions
- Tighter integrations with external platforms and across the institution
If your institution’s business banking solution does not measure up, consider how you can evolve your strategy to better serve this segment. For example, you might need to modernize or replace your platform if personalization is not possible or if you can’t easily integrate with third-party applications.
Learn more about strategies for attracting and retaining small business customers in the Aite-Novarica white paper, Delivering Value to Small Businesses.
