Unlock Growth for Business Banking Solutions with Data Insights

Financial institutions know that businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs), represent a prime source of durable deposits and income. ICBA’s 2024 Trends underscored that SMBs represent a critical opportunity for deposit growth, and interchange from business cards can help financial institutions counter increasing revenue pressures. By deepening these business relationships, banks and credit unions can tap into new revenue streams with business banking solutions. But how can financial institutions uncover these opportunities, without spending days conducting manual data analysis? The answer lies in unlocking data insights with data analytics in banking.

Powering Business Banking Solutions with Data Insights

Every financial institution holds vast amounts of data that can reveal qualified opportunities for expanding commercial and SMB banking relationships. By combining transaction data with product adoption and usage insights, banks and credit unions can better understand their account holders without the need for time-consuming manual analysis. This data-driven approach allows business relationship managers to have intelligent, value-driven conversations with potential business account holders, ultimately positioning the financial institution as a true business partner.

With cleansed and enriched data provided daily, banks and credit unions can gain a clearer view of their account holders’ financial activities, both within their institution and across competitors. For example, when a business makes regular payments to external vendors—whether for payroll services, business insurance, or merchant processing—it signals a competitive opportunity for the financial institution to step in and offer a similar or better service. By knowing which providers businesses are using for their digital banking solutions, business relationship managers can proactively reach out with personalized offers, strengthening the institution’s role in the business’s financial ecosystem.

Key Data Insights for Business Opportunities

Most regional and community financial institutions don’t have data scientists. For the institutions that do, their data team spends 40% of their time aggregating, standardizing, cleansing and categorizing data to prepare it for analysis. Alkami’s Data & Marketing Solutions has the easy button for actionable data insights. The team of data engineers and library scientists at Alkami is dedicated to delivering precise first-party data enrichment results in the form of data tags. More than 50,000 data tags are available to design personalized banking experiences for your account holders. Here are a few key data tags that provide data insights into business behaviors, helping financial institutions identify cross-sell and competitive business opportunities.

Competitive Merchant Processing Data Tag: Identify businesses that use external merchant processing services, indicating an opportunity for the financial institution to introduce its own merchant solutions.   

Competitive Business Financing Data Tag: Track businesses that are making payments to business financing products at other institutions, offering the financial institution a chance to compete for that financing relationship.   

Competitive Payroll Processing Data Tag: Flag businesses that use third-party payroll providers, signaling an opening for the financial institution’s payroll solutions.   

Competitive Business Insurance Data Tag: Highlight payments made to external business or commercial insurance providers, giving the financial institution the opportunity to offer in-house or partnered insurance services.

Business Billing Platforms Data Tag: Identify businesses utilizing external billing platforms, which the financial institution can target with its own solutions or integrations.

Competitive Business Loan Payments Data Tag: Track the amount of business loan payments made to other institutions over the last 30 days, allowing the financial institution to identify high-value opportunities to refinance or provide more attractive loan terms.

Empowering Business Relationship Managers

One of the most valuable aspects of data insights is the ability to pull tailored lists of business account holders based on their financial behaviors. This empowers business relationship managers to focus their efforts on the right opportunities. With targeted data at their disposal, they can approach commercial and SMB account holders with tailored offers, such as business financing, merchant processing services, or insurance options that match their specific needs.

By acting on these data insights, financial institutions can deepen relationships with existing business users, converting competitive opportunities into loyal account holders. This not only strengthens the financial institution’s position as a trusted financial partner, but also enhances the long-term profitability of each relationship.

Driving Success with Data Analytics in Banking

Data-driven strategies to grow business banking solutions have already proven their worth. In 2023, financial institutions utilizing data and marketing insights generated $983 million in business lending and captured $39 million in commercial and business deposits. These results highlight the power of leveraging data to uncover growth opportunities and support relationship managers’ business development efforts. Get cleansed, enriched transaction data and curated data insights for retail and business users on the daily.