Spring is all about fresh starts, cleaning, and landscaping—a time of renewal and reflection before summer. Small-business owners might also consider some spring cleaning regarding their cash management and payment strategies. Spring is a great time to reflect on the previous year’s business performance indicators, tidy up some paperwork, and implement new technologies before summer to get a jump start on hitting next year’s goals.
Aite-Novarica Group’s Commercial Banking & Payments (CB&P) practice is here to help banks help their small businesses meet some of these goals. By popular demand, the CB&P team is once again hosting its Small-Business UX Forum to help financial institutions and service providers with innovative practices to meet small businesses’ cash management, payment, and user experience (UX) demands.
What the Forum Covers
The Small-Business UX Forum will be hosted virtually on Thursday, April 28. Sessions will be available on-demand for registered attendees after the event. This year’s Forum will focus on strategies for financial institutions to implement and position the payments and financial service technologies that SMB users demand.
When it comes to payments and financial services technology, end users have high expectations for UX, often driven by recent innovations emerging at big businesses. They are eager for financial services partners to help them automate processes, create market differentiation, and provide an accessible UX. These demands, combined with the consumer-like UX demands of SMB users, make this segment of business users unique.
Onboarding solutions to meet these demands is a known pain point for many financial institutions. Aite-Novarica Group research shows that over half of businesses believe that the onboarding process with their financial institutions is too repetitive, complex, and manual. Some financial institutions and vendors have made strides to improve this process, increasing client retention and cross-selling opportunities.
Another trend we will explore during the event is how the complex payments landscape is opening the door for non-bank providers to engage directly with small business clients. Approximately 7% of small businesses are already utilizing a fintech provider for payment services, and that number is growing. Understanding why this is happening and how to position small business solutions better in the market is key for financial institutions of all sizes. FIs must be able to distinguish between what is table stakes and what capabilities are still emerging to help prioritize solution initiatives.
Financial institutions of all sizes can access the same or similar technology as these solutions become more affordable and accessible, which helps maintain competitiveness across the industry. Still, it can be difficult to learn about all the new tech tools and understand the ins and outs of the complex technology marketplace aimed at SMBs. These difficulties can mean bankers don’t always have up-to-date solutions available or go-to-market ideas ready on short notice to assist small-business clients with customer experience, payments, lending, and other capabilities. Understanding key segments, like the increasing number of millennial-led businesses, is crucial for providing the right solutions to the right small business clients.
Why to Attend
The Small-Business UX Forum gained traction because it brings together experts from across the SMB space to share their knowledge. This year’s experts include Aite-Novarica Group Head of Banking & Payment Insights & Advisory Christine Barry, Director of Commercial Banking & Payments Erika Baumann, and Strategic Advisors David O’Connell and Gilles Ubaghs. We will also have over a dozen featured speakers from various banks and financial services providers.
These panelists will lead discussions on a wide range of critical topics, some described above, including fintech vendors, lending and onboarding, millennial-run small businesses, and other topics impacting small-business clients.
To register for the Small-Business User Experience Forum, visit our website here.
