Articles
How Banks/CUs Can Close the SMB Product Gap
By Dave DeFazio Digital banks and fintechs have succeeded in luring small and medium-sized businesses by embracing a customer-centric approach, creating “reconfigured mashups” of features and functionality that combine multiple financial services. They offer value-added features like subscription management and real-time payment tools as part of their core checking accounts. While many customers may open…
Read MoreSmall Business Banking’s Growing Product Gap
By Dave DeFazio For small and midsize businesses, access to efficient and value-driven services is crucial to managing their financial operations. However, a significant gap exists between what banks offer and what SMBs truly need. This gap presents a challenge and an oppurtunity for traditional financial institutions as they navigate increasing competition from digital banks…
Read MoreGet Ahead of the Sea Change in Fee-Based Banking
By Adam Thompson In October there were two more clear indicators that banking fees have seen better days as a non-interest income strategy for FIs of all sizes. First digital banking competition is proving that spotting customers money for OD/NSF fees builds customer relationships and boosts organic growth. Leading consumer financial technology company, Chime®, announced…
Read MoreSMB Accounts Are the Bullseye for Growth
By Dave Crook With growing competition from megabanks and big regionals, community FIs need to leverage their ability to attract new retail and commercial customers. We hear this all the time and understand the challenges of going up against these Goliaths with just a sling and stone. But as in the original story of David…
Read MoreBanks Need a SMB Value-Added Strategy
By Dave Crook In this digital era, banking has been playing catch-up with the significant changes in the broader business community, particularly with SMBs. And for many FIs, SMB checking account products seem more a “blast from the past” than other products. Sometimes it’s because there’s a sense that most SMBs have migrated to megabanks…
Read MoreChecks Don’t Matter, Primary Checking Accounts Do
By Kyle Dentlinger The Federal Reserve says check writing has declined almost 75% in the last 25 years. There were more than 4 billion checks written in 2000. Today, that number is around 750 million. And recently we’ve started to see both banks and retailers start to cool on accepting these standards of a bygone…
Read MoreGive Your SMB Accounts What They Need Most: Information Security Tools
By James Mason It’s very likely that if you ask any SMB owner what their biggest threat to running their business is today, information security, cyber attacks (and liability for attacks), and ID theft will be the ones at the top of their list. According to Infosecurity Magazine and Orange Cyber Defense, there’s a 77%…
Read MoreTake Financial Wellness Beyond “Nice to Have” Features
Digital estate planning can build a deeper one-stop financial relationship with your FI By James Mason The last fintech wave was decidedly driven, like today’s burst of interest in AI, by the follow-on effects of the new digital age that has altered the entire marketplace in the past 20 years. We saw it hit retail…
Read MoreHow to Win More SMB Business in This Market
By Gregg Early According to a recent Jack Henry article, the top 25 banks in the US account for 84% of primary banking relationships with SMBs. And community and regional FIs’ share of primary SMB banking relationships are declining due to megabanks and digital banks expanding their market share – from 28% in 2018 to…
Read MoreOD/NSF Fees: The False Safety Net of Doing Nothing
By Mike Branton Given the proposed CFPB rules that are going into effect regarding OD/NSF fees, it’s the right time to find out how banks and credit unions are dealing and planning to deal with this dominant source of non-interest income being increasingly scrutinized (yep, it’s classified as a “junk fee”) and regulated to generate…
Read More