Banks still dont have optimised digital account opening and onboarding

Vanson Bourne, an independent market researcher, was commissioned by Avoka to survey small business owners and executives across Europe with an aim to understand SME attitudes and opinions toward their banking partners. Some of the key results from the research report, How Banks Can Win New Small Business Customers, are:

• only 38% of SMEs said their banks give them the ability to provide supporting documents electronically, but 82% of SME respondents would find that ability to be very or extremely useful;

• 89% of SME respondents say they must input the same information multiple times in the same application, and 80% of SME respondents would consider auto-filling to be very or extremely useful;

• because of frustration with the application process, 67% of SMEs have at some point abandoned a digital.

The report also reveals that when choosing a new banking partner for their business, 86% of respondents report that it is either very or crucially important that they are able to apply for banking products digitally. In fact, 33% of respondents reveal that their business would not partner with a bank who did not offer this. Upon having a bad online banking experience, 20% would be extremely likely to tell other similar businesses, and on a more positive note, 83% say that if they were satisfied with their banking experience they would recommend their bank to similar businesses.

According to Richard Austen, Avoka General Manager EMEA, the research shows that having digital onboarding options is a key factor in SME customers loyalty towards their bank, what kind of recommendation they would make to similar businesses about their banking partner, and whether they would consider switching to a different bank in the future.