There’s lots of buzz in digital business banking lately! Looking back 100 days after our own company launch, we’ve moved full speed ahead to drive innovation — while keeping our ears to the ground to map development to what matters. We’ve gleaned lots of great insights from conversations with customers and prospects, industry trade shows, dialogue with analysts, and more — and are applying those insights to support seamless, feature-rich, and scalable digital business banking.
Below are four key themes that have stood out to us and that are sure to remain important in 2023 and beyond:
- Digital transformation is all about making business banking easier.
Onerous, highly manual processes; duplicate data entry; pulling information from multiple systems… enough already! It’s time to make business banking easier, more attractive, and “stickier” — driving customer adoption and satisfaction. This was evident everywhere we went last year, but perhaps nobody has said it as well and succinctly as DBS Bank, whose signage throughout their technology center in Singapore proclaimed: “Live More. Bank Less.”
Making business banking easier means reducing and eliminating pain points: creating experiences with less friction, fewer clicks, greater automation, and simpler and more secure login and authentication processes.
It also involves taking steps to make the digital business banking platform a “one-stop shop”: delivering greater convenience by embedding ERP systems and other essential fintech applications that business customers rely on, so they can access essential information from a single source of truth.
- There’s an opportunity for banks to better meet the needs of small businesses.
When it comes to digital business banking, small businesses want and need to marry the ease of use with sophisticated feature functionality. It’s incumbent on their banks — and those banks’ technology providers — to support and empower SMBs with the robust capabilities they need to manage liquidity, initiate and receive payments, prevent fraudulent transactions, etc. At the same time, small businesses don’t want to forgo the convenience, intuitiveness, and “clean,” modern look of consumer apps and retail banking platforms — nor should they!
They need an experience that blends the best of both worlds, offering convenience, self-service options, and ease of use, while still providing a rich and comprehensive feature set.
- Embedded banking, or banking-as-a-service, is the way of the future.
In today’s digitally transformed landscape, customers expect to conduct business online easily and effectively. Through embedded banking, and by partnering with fintech companies, banks can embed popular fintech solutions to offer comprehensive services wherever and whenever the customer needs them, without having to leave their digital banking platform.
The convenience factor is compelling! For business users, banking-as-a-service can alleviate the burden of logging into multiple systems to view financial information, and reduce the latency and expenses associated with the pushing and pulling of data. Activities are automated and secure, information is available in real time, and it’s easier to make data-driven decisions that drive business results.
- APIs are the magic that make embedded banking happen!
Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the enabling technology for banking-as-a-service — driving a sea change that makes treasury managers’, accountants and other financial professionals’ lives easier. Using APIs to enable systems to “talk to each other,” banks can provide their services alongside other non-financial ones, and realize the benefits of the cloud right now — with the ability to securely integrate exciting, new, and highly useful solutions into their legacy systems.
It’s no wonder that mid-sized, super-regional, national, and global banks all cite building out API capabilities to provide more seamless services to small business clientele as a top priority for 2023, according to research firm Aite-Novarica Group.
Looking ahead
These are just a few topics and trends that are rapidly becoming strategic priorities for banks today. As technology and digital transformation continue to shape the industry, banks that commit to making business banking easier; offer feature-rich, intuitive experiences; embrace embedded banking; and leverage APIs are well-positioned for success.
Jim Gillespie, Chief Product Officer at Dragonfly Financial Technologies
As the Chief Product Officer for Dragonfly Financial Technologies, Jim is responsible for the team driving innovative strategies to help Financial Institutions leverage connected user experiences to grow their business banking services. Jim’s 20+ years of experience in the FinTech industry began with Fiserv, where he spent 12 years serving in various roles including digital strategy and digital banking for both consumers and businesses. Before joining Dragonfly, Jim was the General Manager of the Digital Banking Business at ACI Worldwide from which our new FinTech was formed. Jim’s career journey also includes roles as a banker responsible for helping corporate customers transition to electronic payments as the Digital Payments Product Manager for a top ten treasury management bank.
