What Businesses Need Out of a Digital Account Opening Experience

If you’re a business owner looking for a new deposit account, you’re most likely in for a frustrating experience.

Given the complexities of business structures, opening a business deposit account often requires more paper gathering than a consumer account, and can therefore take much longer to process.

Unless an applicant is a sole proprietor, opening a new deposit account will require them to provide personal identification information for both themselves and any co-owners with at least a 25 percent stake in the company.

Additionally, business owners will be expected to gather:

• Employer identification numbers.
• Business details such as business name and address, trade name, Doing Business As (DBA) name, business entity type, and industry disclosures.
• Organizing documents and agreements such as a business license, business name registration certificate, partnership agreement, articles of organization, and/or articles of incorporation.

Gathering all of this paperwork is only one step of the process for business owners, of course. They also need to get this information to their financial institution, which more likely than not will require a physical trip to a branch.

In 2022, it’s no surprise that legacy processes like these have led to an uptick in application abandonment, with a full 56 percent of respondents, in a recent Signicat survey, reporting they’ve abandoned a financial application in the last two years.

With that in mind, it’s important to note the top three reasons individuals abandon financial applications are because 1) they require too much information, 2) they take too long to complete, and 3) they require a physical delivery of documents to the branch.

In a world where a digital business loan can be secured in the time it takes for a coffee break, there’s no reason business owners should need to go through a painful, legacy process when simply opening a new deposit account. In fact, as recent research suggests, a quality digital account opening experience is a key characteristic of today’s highest-performing financial institutions.

To help banks and credit unions compete in an increasingly digital business banking environment, we’ve developed Digital Account Opening for Businesses. As a true partner in innovation, Numerated has worked with more than 140 financial institutions to transform the way they lend to businesses, and we’ve taken those learnings into our new digital account opening solution.

In order to create the kind of experience businesses need from a digital account opening solution, we:

• Built the industry’s first, all-in-one business account opening and loan application experience. Many business borrowers, especially new customers, will need a deposit account in addition to the loan they‘re applying for. We’ve built the industry’s first all-in-one experience, allowing borrowers to apply for a new loan and a deposit account, in a single, seamless experience that can be completed in just minutes.

• Built digital account opening, for businesses, from the ground up. As the only loan origination system built specifically for business banking, we’ve taken the same approach to our digital account opening experience, developing the technology in close collaboration with customer institutions. Leverage the same technology more than 30,000 users and over 500,000 businesses trust to handle the complexities of business customers, beneficial ownership, and signature authorities—along with full KYC and KYB capabilities.

• Built integrations for instant funding from external accounts. We’ve made it just as easy for businesses to fund their new deposit accounts from external sources, as it is to fund them from pre-existing accounts with the institution.
• Built an omni-channel experience. Whether through a fully self-service experience, or with the help of a trusted banker, business customers can apply for a new deposit account when and where it makes most sense for them. Our customer portal enables business owners to easily transfer docs or get support, whether they’re online, on the phone, or in the branch.

Additionally, we built Digital Account Opening for Businesses with the reality of banks’ and credit unions’ technology stacks in mind. That means whether you need a standalone solution to integrate with existing technology, or you’re looking for an experience integrated directly into the Numerated Loan Origination System, Digital Account Opening for Businesses is flexible enough to accommodate. 

Most importantly, pre-filled dynamic applications make it incredibly easy for a business to complete a new deposit application in just minutes.

Taken together, Deposit Account Opening for Businesses directly addresses the three main reasons businesses abandon financial applications, giving you an important tool in attracting new business customers and growing your portfolio.

To learn more, watch the on-demand recording of our June 28 webinar featuring a demo of Digital Account Opening for Businesses.