There's a lot of talk about business banking, especially around the opportunity to better serve micro, lifestyle, and small businesses.
The Future of Small Business Banking
A recent American Banker article visualizes a future state of business banking.
“A different kind of small-business-focused bank is about to emerge and these newcomers will look very different than current lenders in this sector. They will provide best-in-class services, no longer treating small businesses as poor cousins within large consumer lending divisions. And some will target a single niche, tailoring their services to a specific type of business.
Innovations in fintech, driven by big data and artificial intelligence, are converging to create a new world for small businesses. Now all of their financial services can be interconnected, predictive, intuitive and readily available. And business owners can focus on what they do best — running the business, rather than trying to be their own financial adviser, payroll clerk, loan officer and more.”
Let's Focus on the Present
The future state of small business banking described in the article is a position we at Autobooks support, however we believe in order to get there you have to start laying a small business banking foundation now.
The first step is to evaluate your own business banking product suite. Non-bank providers like Paypal and Square are capturing market share by offering the essential tools these businesses need, most of which are directly related to the capturing of the customer payment. Compare what you offer to these non-bank providers and other leading financial institutions. Simply getting this into a spreadsheet to compare your offering to others will begin to highlight strategic product gaps.
Next, schedule time to meet with some of your small businesses. A simple conversation can help bring to light moments of struggle or frustration in their day to day business operations. These moments of struggle are areas of opportunity that if solved, become points of differentiations for your financial institution. At Autobooks, we make it a priority to talk in-depth with our small businesses. Listening to their concerns means we can build solutions that meet their needs.
How to Transform Your Financial Institution Now
There are over 30 million small businesses in the Unites States. These businesses are in search of tools to help them better manage their business back offices. An immediate opportunity to better serve these businesses could come in the form of a Fintech partnership. Integrating digital first small business products directly into your existing banking channels enables you to better compete against non-bank providers, deeper customer relationships, and establish a new small business foundation to build on moving forward.
Autobooks helps financial institutions address the rapidly evolving small business market. We do this by offering a small business product suite directly integrated within your online and mobile banking channels. We enable businesses to send invoices, get paid online, track customer payments, and pay bills all backed by an accounting platform that automates the need for manual bookkeeping. Please contact us here.
