Rapidly changing business requirements and regulatory environments worldwide have led companies to adopt new ways of managing their operations and financial planning. These paradigm shifts have, in turn, drastically altered corporate customers’ expectations of their banks.
Calls for greater connectivity, more widespread digitization, more customizable products and services, and real-time status updates are just a few of the many demands that have grown more urgent in corporate banking over the last few years.
Given the volatility of the current business environment, today’s corporate banks are now under extraordinary pressure to maintain their crucial role in their clients’ financial management.
In this regard, they face stiff competition from fintech, challenger banks, and even corporate institutions themselves. Many of these emerging competitors have found effective ways to build their own contextualized software solutions and optimize their financial services for the needs of a digital world.
Experts across the banking industry generally agree that corporate banks must evolve to generate true value, differentiate themselves from their competition, and remain relevant to their client base. In particular, they should strive to meet the following major expectations from corporate customers:
Top-Quality Digital Experiences
The highly digital nature of today’s global economy has conditioned customers to expect fast, frictionless, constantly accessible transactions from service providers no matter the industry.
Corporate banking clients now demand the same superior levels of efficiency and convenience from their banks that they regularly experience from institutions such as e-commerce platforms and streaming services.
Simple, straightforward digital transactions and more self-service options are among the most commonly cited major changes corporate clients want their banks to implement. Desired improvements include seamless data transfers, a single login page for active services, and the ability to view balances and transactions online.
Banks must also minimize customer touchpoints throughout their processes and ensure that clients never have to submit the same documentation or fill out the same forms twice.
Furthermore, modern corporate customers expect banking services to be available to them 24/7 through a number of different channels, including by telephone, email, SMS, in-app messaging, and others.
Additionally, they expect their banks to provide a fully connected experience across these multiple channels. Many companies, for instance, want the freedom to initiate a transaction on one channel and complete it on another with little to no difficulty if the need arises.
Industry-Specific Advising and Solutions
There is abundant data to assert that most corporate banking clients consider the advisory services their banks provide a major benefit to the bank-customer relationship.
To contend more efficiently with the increasingly unpredictable industry and market conditions they face day-to-day, many of these clients desire more personalized advice from the banks they work with.
These companies require advisory services that are contextualized in light of their particular industry and business needs.
This emphasis on providing more customization and personalization options extends as well to the solutions banks offer their corporate customers.
In recent years, a majority of corporate clients have reported disappointment with their banks’ lack of customized offerings, asserting that they prefer to use banking products that have been built with their organization’s specific needs in mind.
Corporate banks must thus prioritize working with clients to develop industry-specific and highly tailored solutions.
Improved Connectivity
Banks cannot simply develop digital tools and solutions in response to singular, isolated customer concerns. Corporate clients today are looking for comprehensive, well-integrated end-to-end solutions that connect all lines of business across the corporate banking ecosystem.
This ecosystem includes the client themselves, their bank, and any other significant parties they work with such as business partners, vendors, and government institutions.
Complete Transparency
Contemporary corporate banking customers place a greater premium on transparency than ever before. According to one survey, for instance, up to 69 percent of surveyed clients stated that they needed their banks to take a strong position on capital, liquidity, and risk to help them better navigate today’s volatile financial marketplaces.
At the minimum, this means that banks should be able to communicate in real-time with their corporate customers on the status of each transaction.
Over time, businesses have also grown more interested in predictive analytics, particularly in the ways it can be used to improve cash flow forecasting and drive intelligent decision-making.
Access to historical information on cash inflow and outflow can lead companies to anticipate future financial developments and prepare accordingly.
In this area, corporate customers are looking to banks as sources of this crucial business data, as well as strategic partners that can help them leverage this data effectively.
Competitive Pricing
It only stands to reason that most, if not all, corporate clients demand competitive rates from their banks. In addition, many surveys show that customers that have enjoyed long and productive relationships with their banks also desire preferential, relationship-based pricing, discounts, product and service bundles, and other benefits.
Corporate banks have historically been slow to update their legacy systems and processes, but the current business environment dictates that they must evolve if they are to remain relevant to their client base.
For today’s corporate banks, effective adaptation means leveraging all available technologies, resources, and human capital to address changing client needs and create the best possible customer experiences.
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