iGTB, the world’s first comprehensive global transaction banking solution from Intellect Design Arena Limited, today announced the results of its landmark survey into the online banking needs, problems and preferences of UK SMEs. With SMEs traditionally under-served by banking providers – whose solutions are often targeted at larger corporate clients – the survey sought to clear the mist around SME banking requirements and the financial viability of banks offering better service to this neglected sector.

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% of businesses in the UK, employing 81.6% 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.

Undertaken with the support of Progressive Media – publishers of Economia, the magazine of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, England and Wales (ICAEW) – the survey examined the banking requirements of 162 UK SMEs to clarify their existing banking behaviour, their biggest gripes with regard to current bank offerings, and their most desired capabilities (including the ability to use automated scenario-building and generation of recommended actions).

“SMEs are the “Cinderella of the business world,” said Phil Cantor, Head of Digital Council, iGTB. “They’re 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”.

The full survey report – produced by iGTB’s Digital subject-matter experts Phil Cantor, Mike Rayfield, Henry Gorbet and Deepa Santhanam – is available for download here.