Awards for Excellence 2018
|
|
It is hard to imagine another bank coming close to Bank of America Merrill Lynch for the sheer breadth of what it can offer to small and medium-sized enterprises. A lot of that is to do with a philosophy that looks beyond the size of the client to the value of nurturing a sound business and to be best-positioned to support it as it grows.
It is a philosophy that those tasked with looking after SME clients at BAML have espoused for years and is why the bank is again North America’s best bank for SMEs.
It helps that BAML chairman and chief executive Brian Moynihan knows the value of the SME franchise. He regularly name-checks it when speaking about the bank. Talking to analysts about the bank’s first-quarter 2018 results, he noted the 9% year-on-year growth in loan balances to small businesses, defined as those with revenues of below $5 million, as well as mid-single digit growth in lending to business banking clients, who have revenues of below $50 million.
 |
| Alastair Borthwick |
The bank’s exposure to both segments totals between $50 billion and $60 billion, a far cry from the $400 billion it extends to commercial banking clients. But its importance to senior management illustrates the way in which the bank differentiates its approach. “We are focused on providing the global capabilities of the bank through our extensive network of local market relationship managers, who are part of the communities we serve,” says Alastair Borthwick, head of global commercial banking.
Simply put, BAML treats SME clients just like any other. Wherever possible it places the same platforms at their disposal, the same product mix and the same technology. Most importantly of all, every important plank of the BAML strategy has its application in the SME world, whether that is responsible growth – the mantra that appears to drive everything at the bank – or technological innovation.
The period under review certainly saw no shortage of developments, although the bank stresses that it is not in the business of innovating for innovation’s sake. New products and services must have their origins in a client need rather than the bank’s technical ability.
In the last year such innovations have included an upgrade to the established CashPro Online platform, CashPro Assistant, which provides an artificial intelligence overlay to help businesses better analyze their banking. Clients using it can plug BAML APIs straight into Microsoft Excel to pull data from CashPro Online. Intelligent receivables is another application using AI to match payments to invoices, improving straight-through reconciliation and therefore enabling faster posting of receivables.
One of the reasons that BAML is so well placed to help small businesses is the way in which it can also serve the needs of the owners of those businesses, not least because of the breadth of its offerings in wealth management.
“This segment is mostly comprised of privately held or family-owned companies,” says Ather Williams, head of business banking. “As a result, their personal and commercial interests are often intertwined. With our Merrill Lynch and US Trust partners, we differentiate ourselves by taking a strategic view of their entire financial picture.”
