Your clients are switching to the wrong banks
Yoseph West
CEO & CO-Founder, Relay Financial
Accounting and bookkeeping firms spend a lot of time building the right technology stack to go with their workflows. Often it can unlock advisory services, boost margins, or lay the foundation for scale.
And yet, many firms leave one core piece of the back-office tech stack to their clients: business banking. So it's no surprise that banking continues to be one of the biggest pain points for firms. Broken feeds, siloed data, and access challenges are just a few.
The problem increases as businesses add more banks to their back-office than ever.
In 2019, 55% of small businesses changed financial institutions.
Despite this, most firms either don’t—or struggle to—recommend banks to their clients. If this is you, you are missing a crucial opportunity to streamline processes and empower clients with better tools.
The core risks of leaving it up to your clients
Over the next 12-24 months, your entire client portfolio could change financial institutions. That could mean exacerbating existing issues:
Broken bank feeds
Low-quality data
Difficulties obtaining read-only access
Inefficient client back and forth for statements, or to bypass two-factor authentication
When your clients make the wrong choice, it undoes all of the hard work you’ve put into building the right tech stack and efficient workflows for your firm.
The opportunity to help your clients make the correct decision
The change is going to happen regardless. Your firm needs to take the lead on the conversation.
Controlling the narrative around bank upgrades could deliver an additional hour of efficiency per month, for each client. The right choice can result in:
A single portal to access all your clients’ banking
Reliable bank feeds that integrate with your ledger
Less back and forth with your clients
More time for advisory services
Higher quality data to support new services
More scalability for existing workflows
Taking the next step
Your clients' appetite for new banking options is a core risk but also a big opportunity for your firm.
One of the long-standing pain points for financial advisors could get a lot worse or be on its way out. Will you make the most of it?