The Olympics of British Business Banking. Event №1 — The Account Opening Sprint. Do you have the need, the need for speed?
In May 2020 Peter Ramsey, Built for Mars founder, conducted an experiment to assess the user experience of opening a retail bank account in the UK. His efforts focused on assessing whether the trio of digital-only challengers; Revolut, Starling and Monzo — offered a faster and easier experience than the major high street providers (because who doesn’t want to win the race quickly and easily…..right!?).
The assumption behind this investigation assumes that every additional click or data point collected in the onboarding journey decreases the likelihood of a customer completing the process. The ability to onboard at the moment you have the customer’s attention is vital for engagement and retention especially because the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) is still perceived to be quite high for digital banking. In Peter’s article the resulting, “Number of clicks to create an account” and “Number of working days to have an active account” infographics indicated strongly that the new kids on the block were indeed worthy of the hype and their audacious ‘banking revolution’ style slogans (see his article for yourself here).
Can the challengers repeat the trick for Business Banking?
My experience as Head of Operations at Mettle and working as a Specialist Onboarding consultant for Tide leads me to believe that the fleet of modern SME account providers would prize slick onboarding journeys and rapid turn around times in order to improve customer conversion and maximise return on marketing budgets.
Having undeniably chalked up a win against the slower, old high street players within the realm of retail bank onboarding — I wanted to test with 5 specific data points (see below) whether the digital challengers would score a similar victory for speed and ease (which are associated very closely with ‘good’ customer experience in this day and age) when it cones to opening a business bank account.
Given that Monzo, Revolut and Starling have all expanded their offerings beyond retail to facilitate business banking, could this dilution of focus mean that specialised SME providers such as Anna, Tide, CountingUp and Amaiz offer better onboarding experiences to business customers?
Setting the ground rules for a fair test
All applications took place during regular working hours with the same information being submitted as far as possible. In each case I was applying as a LTD company for the free version of the available business banking accounts (it should be noted that as well as opening a business account with Tide I actually formed my LTD company through their company formations service which is second to none currently in the market — n.b. not quite the same onboarding journey).
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It is also worth highlighting that Monzo, Starling and Revolut all required a personal retail bank account to be opened first before I could open the business account. As such, they had quite a bit of my data already and this should be kept in mind when assessing how impressive their respective performances were — especially in regards to clicks and data points to open an account.
So… let’s meet our 11 Contenders
- Amaiz — launched in June 2019, Amaiz is one of the latest fintechs to offer a digital-only current accounts to sole traders and limited companies.
- Anna Money — ‘Absolutely No Nonsense Admin’ draws attention with its meowing notifications (n.b. optional sound-effect) and playful feline theme; does Anna have the cream of onboarding journeys as well?
- The Co-operative Bank — Despite requiring a registration of interest before a full application can be made, I was pleased to see the Co-op was still accepting new business applications unlike other traditional names.
- Counting Up — Founded in 2017 by Tim Fouracre of Clear Books fame; this is the business current account and accounting software app you can “apply to in minutes” (subtle difference from suggesting your account ‘will’ be open in minutes).
- HSBC Kinetic — HSBC have recently launched Kinetic as their app store answer to business banking. At the time of writing it is currently only available for iPhone with a full roll out on Google Play to follow.
- Lloyds Bank — Holding down the fort for the old school, Lloyds is yet to develop an app only onboarding experience for business banking. I battled my way through their desktop journey all the same.
- Monzo Business — Without the glow of hot coral for its business banking card, can Monzo inspire similar levels of trust, community engagement and fanfare that catapulted its retail banking proposition to stardom?
- NatWest — While I’m sure the long term future of NatWest business banking rests with Mettle, those with a penchant for webpages might still choose to open a business account via NatWest.
- Revolut Business — Revolut came out top of the pops when it came to the number of clicks required to open a retail banking account. Can the “challenger” (not sure this is a fair term given recent headlines) prove equally as adept in the realm of business banking?
- Starling Bank — Professing to be the bank ‘helping business fly’, Starling has spared no penny in its small business marketing campaign. Is the advertising effort backed up by an admirable account opening experience?
- Tide — established in 2015, Tide was one of the first digital only finance platforms in the UK to offer current accounts for businesses. It promisingly boasts the ability to provide a “sort code and account number in minutes”. You might have seen them on the tube and plastered all over buses recently.
Notable Absentees
A number of the high street banks and even one or two fintechs were not taking new applications for business banking when I started applying earlier this year or would only accept an application if you already have personal account with them. Happy to re-race when they open up again.
Let the games begin…
1. Clicks required to create an account
The old favourite; a surefire indicator of account opening ease and user experience. This includes any clicks resulting from follow up questions that were asked before the account was open (as per Starling, Anna, HSBC etc.).
2. Screen time required (minutes) to create an account
The thought of spending hours on a phone or laptop feeding information into an onboarding journey is not the most attractive of prospects. As a customer I may not actually mind waiting a short moment to have my details checked in the background but I want to spend the least amount of time focusing on the task of account opening.
3. Data points provided to create an account
Strong performance here is a good indicator of a well integrated account opening journey that prioritises user experience. Conversely, asking a lot of questions up front can prevent having to reach back out for further information and gives the provider greater insight into the risk profile of a prospective new customer.
4. End to end time to have an active account?
Time elapsed from the minute the application started to the Sort Code and Account Number being available online or in app. The clock doesn’t stop over the weekend; this is a 24/7 ‘always on’ world we live in these days (rightly or wrongly).
5. Time before the physical card is received in the post
The time elapsed from the account being made active to receiving the physical debit card in the post. Whilst the clocks may not stop, the post does on Sundays — dutifully noted and accounted for.
The Medals Table
No matter which way you cut the data (and trust me — I’ve sliced more times than a kid during lockdown on Fruit Ninja —including a fun afternoon researching how Olympic medal tables are calculated) the conclusions in respect to the account opening sprint are pretty clear.
The stand out sprint performers by far are — perhaps unsurprisingly — the neo business accounts focused purely on business banking, particularly CountingUp, Amaiz and Tide (although Anna is probably my personal favourite for reasons I may explain later). They generally out perform both the high street banks and the originally retail focused challengers i.e. Monzo, Starling and Revolut.
Want to know more?
The above is really just a taster of the work I conducted over a period of 3 months analysing onboarding journeys within the UK’s SME banking landscape. I’m a big lover of detail, data and a spreadsheet so there’s plenty more to unwrap if you’re interested. Drop me a LinkedIn message if you’d like to discuss, ask any questions or tell me how I could improve my content (I love feedback!). In particular if you’d like to know more about the following then please do reach out:
- A list of every single question and data point I observed being collected by the British SME account providers (there are some other accounts such as Coconut, Mettle, Monese etc. that I actually haven’t included here but I have some data on too).
- The frequency of which a question or data point is asked by the provider e.g. out the 11+ providers I analysed how many asked for the customers telephone number?
- Information relating to the position of where a questions or data point is collected within a user onboarding journey e.g. “Would you like to enable Fingerprint / Biometric Identification” i.e. for logging in and out of the app easily (and 2FA!) was on average the 5th question (4th by median) asked by account providers. From my research and past experience I have a pretty good idea of what an optimised onboarding journey might look like. If speed is the name of your game that is….. It’s not the name of mine as things go; I prefer accuracy, precision and adherence to regulation but speed is a fun opener. Just talk to Jimmy Anderson.
- The third party suppliers that the different SME account providers use for different elements of their onboarding journeys e.g. where do providers outsource biometric identity verification to?
Thanks for reading…. the FINTech luddite: bringing the CLUB to financial technology.
