Awards for Excellence 2020
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There’s practically nothing that a North American small to medium-sized enterprise might want to do that Bank of America won’t be able to help with. Its strategy, built around six service areas, has been enduringly constant for five years, and it again wins the award for North America’s best bank for SMEs.
It encompasses treasury, credit lending, international subsidiaries, investment banking, financial benefits for employees and the simpler end of the spectrum, covering risk management through derivatives on interest rates and foreign exchange.
“We have terrific capabilities in each of those six areas, but what makes us a compelling provider is that we are also local – we are in your city,” says Alastair Borthwick, Bank of America’s global head of commercial banking.
The year under review saw more enhancements to BofA’s market-leading CashPro platform, but one development specifically designed for small companies was the introduction of Working Capital Manager for companies with sales of $5 million to $10 million.
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Ather Williams, |
Ather Williams, head of business banking, sums up its genesis: “How do you bundle credit and treasury in a simple way for a $10 million company that has aspirations to be a $20 million company but can’t handle all the billing platforms, multiple credit addendums and all the paperwork?
“How do you simplify it, like in the consumer world? The answer we came up with was Working Capital Manager.”
When the coronavirus crisis hit, small businesses were at the sharp end of getting to grips with mobile methods of conducting payments and tracking their cash. Pretty soon the calls were coming in.
“At first it was companies in New York City, Boston and Seattle, asking: ‘How quickly can I get on CashPro Mobile?’” says Borthwick. “Then it was the whole country asking us.”
Onboarding is a big challenge at the best of times, but doing it at a bank that had just moved 180,000 of its staff to remote working made it that bit tougher.
“If you had asked me before, I would have said it was impossible,” says Borthwick. “It’s never a scenario you would consider. If Boston was hit by something, you would still have Seattle or Chicago.”
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Alastair Borthwick, |
BofA runs webinars to teach clients the ropes, usually two a week. It was obvious that wouldn’t be enough. Suddenly the bank was doing 16 in a week and with up to 1,000 people in a session.
Beyond technical solutions, there was a demand for market knowledge.
“A big part of what we were able to offer clients was not just the mobile functionality but the insight that we have on what was going on around the country,” says Williams. “We had a lot of dialogue around the spending information that we can get from the consumer bank.”
Implementing Paycheck Protection Program was another challenge. It was a critical support for small businesses, although many fell foul of seemingly ever-changing government rules on which firms would qualify.
Doug Hines, owner of Atlantic Natural Foods, a vegetarian food business, was one client who missed out on the first round of PPP. But he tells Euromoney how BofA moved mountains to ensure his application was successful in the second.
“I had our BofA relationship manager on the phone to us at 2am her time ensuring that our loan got processed, and then at 5am to let me know it was all taken care of,” he says.
He has been with the bank for 10 years and cannot speak highly enough of its responsiveness and consistency. That’s a view echoed by another BofA client, Emily Glidden, senior director, treasury, at health insurance plan Blue Shield of California.
“We really look at Bank of America as a strategic partner to us here,” says Glidden. “We have had such continuity with the folks here in San Francisco – in the 13 years I have been with Blue Shield our relationship contact has only changed once.”
