4 Out of 5 Business Owners Are Not Satisfied with Their Bank’s Offerings

Most businesses, including banks, are continually trying to improve the services they offer to customers, creating better experiences that attract and keep a valuable audience. Originating in medieval times out of a need for a place to store money and standardize currency for trade, banks also became crucial for collecting taxes and providing loans.

Hundreds of years later, banking really hasn’t changed that much — but it’s about to. Pushed by competition created by evolving technology, banks are scrambling to figure out how to remain relevant to critical business customers.

We’re at the dawn of a banking evolution

In a recent McKinsey article, it is explained that banks need to recognize why their long-time dependable offerings just don’t differentiate them anymore. “While traditional banks have been convenient one-stop shops for businesses and consumers, many haven’t evolved their products in a way that matches the tech-driven pace of change in other industries.”

Savvy business customers want their banking experience to be, at the very least, as good as the countless fintech platforms that have been launched over recent decades.

Business owners are not satisfied with their banks

An article in the ABA Banking Journal on why consumer experience matters in business banking, the author points to recent research from Cornerstone Advisors and digital payments provider Marqueta. The Marqueta study said “68% of business owners shared that the digital features of business bank accounts were not as advanced as their personal consumer bank accounts,” and Cornerstone’s research shows that “four out of five business owners do not believe their banks provide the services needed to run their business finances.”

That stat is both mind-boggling — and yet not surprising — to me. When 80% of your business customers don’t believe you are satisfying their needs, you have a big problem. There’s no time to sit around planning for “someday” revamping your banking platform. But, unfortunately, most banks move very slowly.

Satisfying customers is as simple as the right fintech partnership

I’ve talked about this issue in the past. We started Tight because we saw a need for simplifying expenses and accounting for small business owners.

Now it’s time for traditional banks to step up and ensure their small business customers have the tools they need. And the solution can be as simple as the right fintech partnership. At Tight, this is what we do every day — we turn traditional banks into holistic, digital one-stop shops that serve the needs of modern business owners.

As the McKinsey article states, “the era when all financial services were dominated by monolithic banking entities is over.” If traditional banks don’t want to become irrelevant, they need to evolve, and they need to do it quickly.

In recent years, the advent of neobanks has made a lot of banks recognize that they need to address the future of banking, but they’re moving too slowly. We will see a lot of change in the banking industry in the next 10 years, and it may be too late for some. The banks that will survive are those that can evolve with speed.

All small business owners need the same basic financial tools

As I stated in an article a few months ago, the holy grail of small business banking is having everything in one place. This includes:

• Invoicing: Give them the ability to easily invoice their customers.
• Expense tracking: Make it easy for them to track expenses, which should be simple for banks.
• Financial reporting: Make reporting as simple as clicking a button.
• Accounting: Give them the ability to run their accounting through your platform.
• Bookkeeping: Provide a simple — and effective — bookkeeping solution.
• Income taxes: Help simplify doing taxes by having everything in one place.

New platforms offering non-traditional banking are listening to the needs of small business owners and serving customers exactly what they want, at reasonable prices. Banks cannot afford to ignore this competition.

My advice to senior bank leaders and decision makers is don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. I’d love to chat and demonstrate how Tight’s white-labeled API can be simple to integrate and fast to roll out to customers.