Business banking. What is it and what services does it offer?
Introduction
Business banking, or business banking, refers to the financial services offered by traditional banks to small, medium and large companies. Commercial or business banking is one of the oldest businesses in history, and its origin dates to the period of 2,000 years before Christ in ancient Mesopotamia.
In recent years, the world of banking has evolved a lot. The global financial crisis of 2008 marked a before and after for the banking model. Until then, an apparently profitable business model ended up being totally unfeasible and led to the bankruptcy of a large number of financial institutions in the world. Since then, many banks have completely revamped their business models, and new opportunities have emerged along the way.
What types of Banking are there?
Private banking:
Private or personal banking is banking focused on financial services for individuals, also called private or retail. Generally, the type of services offered by banks for individuals vary from opening bank accounts, issuing debit and credit cards, payment services through transfers or mobile applications, or granting mortgage or consumer loans. Banking for individuals has evolved a lot in recent years, thanks largely to the emergence of neobanks and challenger banks that were born as a result of the financial crisis that we mentioned at the beginning of the article and that focused a lot on digitization and the customer experience. user as a recipe to create pioneering and successful business models.
Private banking
Private banking is also a set of financial services offered by banks also focused on individuals. However, these are more focused on offering investment services and wealth management advice. In many cases, these tend to be banks or financial institutions other than the big banks, although it is true that all the big banks also have their teams and divisions that offer this type of service. Private banking has also undergone an important turn in recent years. The irruption of mobile applications to manage wealth and facilitate investment and transactions has turned the sector upside down, which has also focused a lot on improving and digitizing user experiences.
Company banking
Business banking, or business banking, as its name suggests, is the set of financial services offered by banks to companies. Next, we will proceed to explain in greater detail the operation of these banks and the services that they usually offer to companies.
What is business banking?
As we introduced in the previous section, business banking refers to those financial services offered by banks in the business sphere, that is, aimed at a customer profile that is business. Banks offer these services to companies of all kinds, from small, medium, to large companies. The service, however, does vary depending on the size of the company. Therefore, the banking offered for SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprises), which normally need to open bank accounts, manage payments, and small amounts of financing, will not be the same as the banking offered to large corporations where Banks can offer additional investment banking services, for example, where they advise companies on business purchase and sale processes (M&A), capital markets, obtaining large lines of financing, risk management and exchange rates, among others.
What services does business banking offer?
The common services that business banking usually offers for most small and medium-sized companies are the following:
– Opening of a bank account for company incorporation
– Opening of subsequent bank accounts
– Issuance of company debit cards
– Bank transfer services
– Bank account services and transfers in foreign currency or multi-currency
– International bank transfer services
– Financing lines of “working capital” or working capital
– Financing of invoices through factoring and confirming lines
– Granting of guarantees for different types of operations
On the other hand, the more specific services offered by banks in the areas of corporate finance and investment banking, in addition to those previously mentioned for SMEs, would be the following. However, these services are not usually provided by the teams themselves. Rather, the bank generally has separate branches called investment banking areas.
– Business valuation advice
– Advice on the sale of companies
– Advice and corporate financing services
– Construction and development project financing services
– Obtaining financing in capital markets through issuances of corporate debt (for example bonds), or IPOs (Public Offering for Sale)
– Advice on risk management of exchange rates and interest rate hedges
Despite these being the main ones, each of them possibly has infinite ramifications with complementary and related services. As can be seen, this last service listing is generally required by large companies with a global presence, and in many cases listed on public stock markets.
What services does business banking not offer?
The large banking aimed at companies offers a wide variety of services worldwide, covering practically all the main needs of companies. The Euro zone is home to around 5,000 banks, offering this type of service. As we previously mentioned, in recent years there has been a great evolution in the field of personal banking, as new neobanks have emerged offering traditional banking services, but with a slightly better user experience. This was a huge change for the industry, which soon realized the need to evolve and provide innovative services.
In the business field, we currently appreciate that business banking is in an environment similar to that of personal banking a few years ago before the banking revolution began. That is to say, it is in a rather backward situation with respect to current technological developments.
Today, business banking lacks digitization, treasury, and synchronization services with other systems. Banking is still offline and operates very independently. Banking currently lacks services such as:
– Agile bank account opening process
– Payment services in a few clicks
– Treasury forecast services
– Digitalization services for tickets or receipts associated with cards
– Instant credit scoring or analysis services and financing processes without bureaucracy.
What is the future of business banking?
The future of business banking has a long way to go. It is expected that in the coming years there will be the same level of innovation in the business space that the personal or B2C space suffered in recent years. Digitization and automation have come to stay, and coincidentally these are the main points that current business banking lacks. The irruption of banking infrastructure separate from that of traditional banks, and the irruption of European regulations such as PSD2 or future PSD3, it is possible that they will change the landscape of traditional banking for companies in favor of technology companies that through software automate, digitize and They offer banking services.
Snab as a digitalization and automation tool for payments, collections and treasury management
Snab is a cloud platform for treasury management, and management of accounts payable and accounts receivable, which through the PSD2 regulatory standard, and banking infrastructure offers pioneering services for the automation and digitization of financial services for companies.
The platform allows, among other things, to automate the treasury management of companies giving the possibility to see and do everything you need in a few clicks. Snab therefore focuses on solving all those problems that traditional banking presents.
Snab automates the receipt of invoices, the extraction of their data with OCR scanner technology, digitizes the approval management of said invoices by creating “workflows” or approval flows, and finally allows them to be paid in one click , without having to leave the platform, granting full visibility and control over the company’s treasury at all times. In addition to reducing manual processes and eliminating all errors derived from manual tasks.
Snab is therefore a pioneering platform that offers treasury services, and payments in a few clicks, through its cloud technology platform. The platform automates and digitizes each and every one of the processes around bank management, invoice payment management, and treasury forecasts.
