Banks’ Clunky Digital Tools Alienate Many Small Firms

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) make large contributions to most national economies, yet they have a blurred identity at many banks. They’re orphaned between the retail consumer and the commercial and investment lines, with banks often underinvesting in selling and serving SMBs.

Increasingly, though, banks are stepping up their offerings and ways of serving SMBs. To that end, one critical component involves improving digital banking tools. Bain & Company’s recent NPS Prism® survey of 20,403 SMBs in the US found gaps in digital banking:

• Many episodes that SMBs go through remain largely physical, especially those involving applications for a product or service, and they’re less digital than episodes with consumers.
• Raising the rate of digital interactions often is a matter of banks making digital channels easier to use and more accessible.
• Digital failure rates remain too high for some banks in areas such as setting up a line of credit, where the process is complicated and fragmented, lacking a single point of contact.

Many SMBs crave better digital options. Banks that make their digital interactions more robust and useful stand to gain more of this large market—$180 billion in revenue in the US alone.