Digital finance: how the bank-business relationship is evolving

The relationship between banks and businesses is changing profoundly thanks to digital solutions. It is no longer simply a relationship based on branches, in-person services and traditional lending, but is becoming increasingly continuous and integrated into business processes.

Here are the main changes.

• From an occasional relationship to a continuous one

Previously, businesses tended to contact their bank mainly to request loans, credit lines or extraordinary transactions, and the relationship was often tied to the branch manager.

Digital enablers such as advanced internet banking platforms, API integrations and new financial dashboards now allow for daily interaction. Data is updated in real time. The bank can monitor cash flows and KPIs on an ongoing basis, where authorised to do so.

The relationship becomes more dynamic and less bureaucratic.

• Faster access to credit, thanks to automated data analysis, Open Banking (PSD2), and, more broadly, increasing integration with databases and external systems.

Credit decisions are faster, based on objective and up-to-date data, and can be automated through auto-decisioning engines for selected amounts and risk profiles. This reduces processing times and information asymmetries between the bank and the business, enables analysts to focus on borderline or more complex decisions, and removes the need for clients to submit large amounts of documentation, often repeatedly, to the various financial institutions they deal with.

• A more advisory and less operational relationship: standard transactions (bank transfers, F24 tax payments, payments and collections) are now digitalised and automated.

As a result, the bank’s value increasingly lies in financial advisory services, strategic planning, and support for international expansion and structured finance. The relationship manager is becoming more of an adviser than a branch operator.

• Integration with company systems: modern solutions enable direct connectivity between banks and clients, with financial solutions becoming increasingly embedded in business processes, not only in terms of cash management and monitoring, but also within sales solutions themselves (embedded finance). The relationship becomes “infrastructural”: the bank becomes embedded in the company’s internal processes and in the supply chain it interacts with.

This is not simply about technology, but about a structural shift in the relationship model and in the balance of bargaining power between banks and businesses. By its very nature, Banca Ifis is dynamic and differs from the traditional banking model built around branches and counters. It has always invested in an omnichannel relationship with its clients, combining its relationship managers with dedicated online channels. This is demonstrated by a number of use cases implemented in recent years:

• The solutions developed to digitalise after-sales management have enabled the myIfis platform to grow and evolve over the years into a fully fledged hub for managing all the main products in the portfolio, extending not only to businesses but also to part of the offering aimed at consumers, who are often the entrepreneurs behind the client companies themselves. Through value-added services (VAS), delivered in partnership with third-party players and integrated into myIfis, the Bank has moved beyond its original, purely financial perimeter. VAS offered to clients, such as Gender Equality Certification, reflect the Bank’s commitment to supporting its customers proactively in an area such as ESG, which is becoming increasingly central and relevant to the market;
• The Digital Selling Platform (DSP) is now an ecosystem embedded across the Group’s sales processes. It has been built to adapt to products and processes that may differ significantly from one another. Consider, for example, the specific requirements of highly industrial and strongly retail-oriented processes such as consumer credit or technology rental, where speed and usability are distinctive features, compared with products such as factoring and industrial leasing, which require a more tailored and bespoke approach for each individual client. Within the DSP, these different models coexist, sharing a number of cross-functional technology modules while retaining their own specific features. The platform has been designed to manage, in a fully integrated way, the interaction between the physical channel, with the aim of enhancing the contribution of product specialists, and the digital channel, allowing clients to manage certain stages of their request independently.