As large financial institutions struggle to reach small business clients, nonbank lenders like BlueVine and Brex have stepped up to offer better services for such enterprises, according to company representatives at Bank Innovation Ignite in Seattle on Monday.

Herman Man, chief product officer at BlueVine, explained how the company creates solutions specifically for its small- and medium-sized enterprise customers. 

“We look across the banking landscape today, there isn’t really one solution that is targeted toward small businesses,” Man said. “ Small businesses often get pushed into retail or they get pushed into commercial — they’re neither. There’s a lot of things that they don’t get such as treasury services.” 

BlueVine offers SMEs business-management products, including lines of credit, invoicing services and up to $250,000 in loans. By using a digital, cloud-based platform and applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to customer data, BlueVine has underwritten SME loans at lower costs and in a shorter time frame than traditional institutions.

See also: Fifth Third Bank taps Fundation to underwrite small businesses

Meanwhile Brex, a San Francisco-based card and financial services startup, offers a Mastercard-backed corporate credit card and a company bank account to growing companies. Arthur  Levy, vice president of business development at Brex, agreed that focusing on what SMEs need to create a solution is key to serving that customer base. Levy said that when Brex was developing its cash-management solution, it wanted to bundle it with the credit card in order to avoid the mistake legacy institutions make that results in SMEs going to different places to have basic business needs met.  

“[Looking at] legacy tech and legacy systems, we see that you have your credit card and sometimes you have a different rewards portal and you have a different login for your checking,” Levy said during the Ignite panel. “Why can’t you have one dashboard, one user interface? [SMEs] want everything in one place.” 

According to Levy, Brex’s bank account is a “high-tech, low-touch experience” that allows SMEs to customize what they need and avoid unnecessary add-ons, like checks or human advice.

The San Francisco-based startup began by offering a Mastercard-backed credit card to growing companies, and eventually began to expand into other services, like a cash-management solution and expense management.

As startups step up their game to reach small businesses, however, banks are improving their offerings for this market segment. For example, Fifth Third Bank recently partnered with digital lender Fundation to speed up loan-approval processes for small businesses.

Smaller financial institutions like BECU, a credit union based in Washington state, are also focusing on outlining SME customers’ specific needs and creating a path to meet them. 

“We’ve been really looking at ways that we can branch out and create an experience that’s unique to those groups,” Amber Smalley, director of digital strategy at BECU, said during the Ignite panel. “[BECU is] creating its own experience in an online and mobile channel is step one, but then really creating a place where they can have all the payment services and those things that they really need to function.” 

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