SMEs in Need of Superior Banking Solutions

iGTB of Intellect Design Arena Limited carried out a comprehensive survey regarding the needs banking solutions for SMEs.

Recently, Intellect Design Arena Ltd with the help of its enhanced worldwide transaction banking solution iGTB, announced the results of its landmark survey into the needs, problems of online banking and also preferences of UK SMEs. Basically, banking companies craft solutions and services for the large corporate companies and while the SMEs’ are traditionally under-served by them. The assessment wanted to clear the haze in the region of SME banking necessities and the monetary feasibility of banks providing improved service to this ignored division.

Studying the banking practicalities and sentiment of 162 SMEs across the UK, the survey results turn common misconceptions on their head. Findings include the revelations that:

• Good customer service does not necessarily mean “the human touch”;
• SMEs are not unsophisticated nor restricted to domestic activities;
• Technology should be used to inject expertise, not just to streamline processes, and
• Banks can afford to serve this sector

Despite representing 99 per cent of businesses in the UK, employing 81.6 per cent of the workforce and pinpointed as “critical” to the growth of the economy, SMEs (corporations with annual turnover of less than £50 million or fewer than 250 staff) have been disadvantaged by a combination of asymmetric information, a lack of economies of scale, the lack of a collective voice, and disproportionate costs when it comes to training, research and development, and regulatory compliance.

Phil Cantor, Head of Digital Council, iGTB said, “SMEs are the “Cinderella of the business world. They are vital to the country’s economy, hugely hard-working but routinely neglected by banks, who wrongly believe it’s not financially viable to serve this sector. This survey will prove invaluable to improving the lot of SMEs – by pinpointing the banking capabilities they actually need, and in turn showing how these can be met by banks, even in today’s difficult economic climate. The findings in this report should be a call to arms; a message to the whole banking industry that we can, and must, do better.”