Keynova Group, the principal competitive intelligence source for digital financial services firms, today announced the results of its 2022 Small Business Banker Scorecard. The annual Scorecard measures the digital user experience of small business customers at 10 national and regional banks. Bank of America has retained the lead position, placing first for Overall Score. The 2022 Small Business Banker Scorecard revealed key industry trends, including advances in payments and money movement user interfaces and more personalization.

“Small businesses have unique banking needs and leading banks are responding with enhancements that ensure their small business customers have multiple payment options and effective cash flow and money management tools via their digital banking experience,” said Susan Foulds, managing director, Keynova Group. “Banks are starting to offer small businesses Real Time Payments with instant delivery; together with invoicing and ACH receivables, customized reporting and personalized digital options, these banks offer powerful capabilities.”

Key Findings:

More and Faster Money Movement Options

Today’s small businesses increasingly expect expedited receipt and credit of funds or instant payments. While Real Time Payments (RTP) reach 61% of U.S. consumer accounts, fewer banks are currently offering it to small businesses. Only two of the 10 banks in the Scorecard – Chase and Citi – offer RTP with instant payment delivery to individuals and other businesses. Like larger corporate businesses, sending ACH payments directly to the accounts of employees, suppliers or vendors is an essential money movement option that many small businesses need. Yet just 60% of the banks provide small businesses outgoing ACH and only 30% allow them to request payments via ACH for receivables, a feature that can be particularly useful when integrated with invoicing. 30% of the reviewed banks - Bank of America, Citizens and PNC – also support invoicing from their online small business banking sites, enabling them to create and send invoices and track receivables. 

Cash Flow and Expense Analytics Important to Small Business Bankers

As cash flow management is of particular importance for businesses, Bank of America and PNC offer reporting tools designed specifically for small businesses including generating default reports and advanced settings for more customized analysis. Overall, 40% of the banks evaluated offer projected cash flow by day, week or month, and 70% offer the option to generate a spending report based on transaction history. As customizing these reports for various business types can be helpful, 60% of banks enable small business customers to categorize or edit transactions versus using bank assigned categories and 40% allow them to create custom categories. Nearly half (40%) of banks enable the spending report or cash flow transactions to be exported into a categorized spreadsheet and provide a print-friendly version of the online report.

Personalization of the Small Business User Experience Adds Value

Personalizing the small business user experience encompasses enabling both the ability to choose interface options with desired information or navigation links to frequently used tasks and providing accessible business-oriented customer support channels. Today, 30% of the reviewed banks – including BMO Harris, Huntington and Truist - enable small businesses to customize their dashboard summary screens to various degrees by selecting information to display or adding links via widgets or tiles. Near real-time chatbot messaging is also trending, creating an inquiry and response thread that authenticated customers can reference later rather than waiting for a chat response or live agent support—and often replacing the legacy message center. Currently only 20% of banks offer two-way messaging to their small business customers–while twice that percentage of banks offer it in consumer online banking, according to the Q2 2022 Online Banker Scorecard. Live real-time chat is provided to online small business banking users by 40% of banks and Citi is the lone bank to offer video meetings with business customers. Proactive notifications about account activity is another emerging service to inform customers. Bank of America stands out by providing proactive balance or overdraft notifications to its small business customers via its mobile app.

About the Small Business Banker Scorecard

Syndicated for more than two decades, Keynova Group’s annual, fact-based Small Business Banker Scorecard objectively evaluates the digital banking services offered by leading U.S. banks that provide small business-focused capabilities to identify best practices, evolving trends and insights. These banks include: Bank of America, BMO Harris, Chase, Citi, Citizens, Huntington, PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo. For more information please visit: https://www.keynovagroup.com/scorecards/#banking