Bank executives from community banks and credit unions are not meeting the demands of their SMB customer as well as they think they are, according to a recent report.
The PACE Report, an annual report released by FIS on how well banks are meeting their customer demands, found that 76% of community bank executives feel they are meeting the digital needs of their SMB clients, while only 47% of these clients expressed satisfaction with the digital products and services being offered by their banks.
This is perhaps because digital transformation is not a high priority for such banks. In fact, the report found that 28% of credit union executives think they are “investing too much,” in their institution’s digital strategy. And only 43% of community banks executives and 38% of credit unions executives feel investing in digital transformation is extremely important.
This is one of the reasons why fintechs like Kabbage, BlueVine, Bento for Business have been carving a substantial niche for themselves in the SMB market, whether that’s by providing accounting and cash management services or even lending.
In fact, Bank Innovation previous reported that when it comes to lending to SMBs, fintechs are expected to pull in a larger market share than banks. These online fintech lenders have originated almost $10 billion in online loans to 180,000 U.S. small businesses from 2015 to 2017. And that amount is expected to increase significantly through the next few years.
According to the FIS report:
SMBs are eager for more commercial service, but developing integrated payables/receivables is a low priority for banks. Worse, banks do a poor job communicating about services they already have.
Aside from SMBs, the report also ranks digital investment priorities among larger banks, community banks, and credit unions.
For both the larger and community banks, payments, which includes faster payments and payments infrastructure was listed as the top priority. About 36% of the top 50 banks, 27% of regional banks, and 26% of credit unions ranked payments as their top investment priority.
Other areas included fraud prevention, digital channel functionality, mobile payments and artificial intelligence.

For this 2018 report, released Wednesday, FIS surveyed 355 U.S. bank executives and compared answers to data gathered in FIS’s SMB PACE survey.
Read the full report here.





