Tyro’s Exploring banking inefficiencies for SMEs report has found that 44 percent of Australian SMEs, or 880,000 businesses, spend more than three hours every week checking, entering, paying and reconciling data, costing each business an average of $7,800 a year.
“But SMEs are drowning under the burden of inefficient online business banking processes, that are robbing them of three hours a week, or 20 days a year,’ said Tyro CEO Jost Stollmann.
“This means SMEs have to work a 13-month year, or give up the equivalent of four weeks’ annual holiday to compensate for banking inefficiencies.”
Stollmann said efficient online banking was critical to the success of SMEs and for a large proportion of Australian businesses their bank was letting them down.
“It is clear that business banking requires a rethink. It needs to be mobile, embedded into business and accounting software and fully automated,” he said.
“The winners in the business banking of the future will marry deep technology and banking know-how.”
Stollmann said SME banking was an industry in transition, and the major providers needed to make it easier for customers to do business.
“From a market that was once considered very niche and challenging to serve, SMEs have now become a strategic target for banks,” he said.
“This flows on from the 2008 financial crisis, when banks began to shift their focus away from large corporates in an effort to seek high yields in a low interest rate environment.
The Tyro SME report draws on a variety of data that is publicly available from both the public and private sector. It also features data obtained through a bespoke survey of 803 Australian SME owner/operators, conducted in May 2016.