Your Checking Products Must Address SMB Customers’ CyberSecurity Concerns
By Dave DeFazio
The statistics are sobering about the cyber challenges and data theft realities of being small and medium businesses (SMB) today.
According to Infosecurity Magazine:
- Over three-quarters of cyber incidents impacted small businesses in 2023.
- Nearly half of all malware targeting SMBs last year focused on data theft.
- Researchers observed a rise in malware-as-a-service (MaaS) operators using malicious web advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning to infect victims.
And it’s not just malware that SMBs have to worry about. A recent article in Cybersecurity Dive revealed some new information from Huntress research.
For example, while malware was responsible for 44% of all SMB incidents in Q3, attackers are more commonly exploiting code libraries or legitimate tools, such as remote monitoring and management software, to enter victim’s networks.
Be An Advocate for Your SMBs
The increasingly digital world means your relationship with SMBs needs to evolve beyond just traditional services and benefits.
Digital payments, payroll, accounts receivable, bookkeeping, and all the rest certainly have significant benefits for SMBs. But all these benefits come with significant risks as well simply expanding a company’s digital footprint.
And these typical account features also fail to differentiate your FI’s SMB checking product from others.
Providing new, non-traditional cyber risk related benefits offer an opportunity for FIs to better retain and grow their SMB accounts by helping these businesses have more peace of mind as they conduct their businesses, whether digitally or via brick and mortar shops.
Adding cybersecurity protection to your SMB checking product will position your FI for additional deposit and credit relationships as well as non-interest income growth.
Six Features to Help SMBs’ InfoSec Health
Not only will looking out for SMBs help build healthier relationships with your current accounts, it also allows you to market a truly unique checking product among your competitors, since many FIs have had their SMB accounts on auto-pilot for years.
Here are our top 6 features you can add to a SMB checking lineup that shows your FI is helping its SMB customers thrive in a constantly evolving digital threat landscape.
- Data Breach Insurance: Reimbursement of expenses related to a data security breach, such as customer notification, legal expenses, card replacement assessments, and forensic audits.
- Account Security Insurance: Protection for an SMB in the event of an unauthorized electronic transfer. The FI can reimburse the unrecoverable funds, and related privacy event and post event expenses.
- Dark Web Monitoring: Monitor SMBs’ business domain, Employee Identification Number, state registration number, and Creditsafe number to secure their business.
- Business Credit Suite: Monitor changes and new activity on their business credit report, view their business credit report, track their business credit score, and track trends on their dashboard.
- Data Breach Codes: If a company has experienced a data breach, it can request protection for affected individuals.
- Business ID Restoration Pro: 24/7 live support with fully managed identity restoration. Available tools include assessments for security and cyber-risk, and breach readiness.
Building Value for SMB Checking Accounts
After doing all the research, and doing significant research into SMB checking products with our 400+ FI clients and over 2,000 small business owners, we have built the most innovative checking account product delivered to SMBs today.
Our BaZingBiz solution will optimize deposits and fee revenue while delivering modern, in-demand SMB non-traditional benefits that are designed to build financial creditworthiness and wellness as well as monitor the security of SMBs’ data management and cyber security needs.
Regardless of your SMB game plan, making your SMB checking account products different, more valuable and relevant to today’s SMBs is a sure fire way to retain the SMBs customers your competition is trying to steal and putting you in an advantageous position to acquire new SMB customers.
Dave DeFazio is partner at StrategyCorps, a Nashville-based firm that provides financial institutions across the U.S. with mobile and data solutions that protect and grow customer relationships. Connect with him at dave.defazio@strategycorps.com or on LinkedIn.