SME Banking Will Never Be the Same Again

The new battlefield for challenger banks and fintech is the SME market, and COVID will not stop that process. The Banking Scene Afterwork of May 7 was about precisely that, with our special guest Brad van Leeuwen.

SME financial services is a complicated business. If you know that 99% of all businesses in Europe fall under the definition of an SME, you get an idea of how diverse the market looks. A construction company with 20 workers, a 100-person professional services company operating in different countries, a small shop owner or a freelancer have entirely different needs. They have different interests. They have separate identities.

Because of their great variety, you cannot serve them all the same way, even though for decades, that is what banks did.

Together with a crowd of 25 professionals from all over the world, we looked at the past, the present and future of SME banking to find an answer on how the future of SME banking may look like.

Moving away from the one-size-fits-all model

Like I said: SMEs is a very diverse market segment. ‘Segment’ is not even the right word, since it is a multitude of different personas. I know this is not a…