By Matt Cockayne, Chief Commercial Officer at Yapily

Businesses of all sizes are battling the ongoing effects caused by the pandemic, and there’s no denying that the UK economy is perhaps worse than it has ever been before. As local lockdowns make their way across the country, businesses are in dire need of extra financial support.

The government-backed loan schemes have been a lifeline for many. But as the demand for financial aid continues to grow, many businesses are not receiving funds quickly enough, and lenders are bearing the brunt of this scrutiny. Indeed, there are those who suggest that lenders are fully aware of the current urgency, so should be doing more to respond to their customers’ needs.

No one could have predicted the detrimental impact Covid-19 has had on the global economy. For lenders, this has left them with no choice but to enforce stricter rules, and add more stringent criteria to manage this influx of loan applications.

While shutting up shop to new customers is an easy route for lenders to take, it’s not forward thinking, and the current market, we hope, is only temporary. As such, growing a customer base is equally as important as retaining existing accounts – especially as there are still lots of  businesses in need of support.

We are already seeing innovative lenders, who are spotting this opportunity to grow their customer base, however there are still some who are missing this possibility to expand.

Below are 5 reasons to why lenders may be losing customers, and how best to fix this:

1. Limited personalisation

Standardised loan options mean customers are limited to how they can respond to the current market and thrive in a post-covid world. But every business is different, so they need personalised options best suited to them.

Services like Open Banking allow lenders to distribute hyper-personalised solutions to their customers. By harnessing real-time transaction and account data, lenders can make much fairer and faster decisions based on a business’ actual financial position, not estimates.

2. Manual, outdated processes

Traditional lending processes take time, and in this current climate – time is money. Not only do manual, paper-based loan procedures take far too much time, they also increase the chance of inefficiencies. By relying on outdated information, lenders are not in the best position to offer businesses the optimal lending options.

Through innovation, the speed and efficiency of lending will drastically improve. Instant access to up-to-date financial information via Open Banking APIs, means lenders can speed up all mandatory approval processes and businesses can receive funds directly into their bank accounts, reducing the delay in receiving loans..

3. No sense of transparency

A lack of transparency for providing loan terms or rejecting loan applications, creates an element of doubt, which ultimately drives customers away.

Lenders need to over-communicate with their customers, explaining in detail how they have reached their solution. This process is made easier through harnessing services like Open Banking. Decisions are based solely around an individual’s financial situation, using real-information instead of generalised data sets, meaning lenders can give transparent feedback to the business in question.

4. Lack of security

Out-dated systems, and long manual processes not only cause inefficiencies, increasing the chance of human error or fraud. For example, human error led CitiGroup to mistakenly transmit $900 million earlier this year.

By harnessing Open Banking, lenders are able to access fast, and highly secure data transfers – customers get to decide who accesses their financial data, and how long they’d like it to be shared for. As processes go digital, there is a significantly lower chance of human error or loopholes opening the door to fraudsters.

5. Substandard lending decisions

Unmanageable application checks are exposing businesses to risk, and causing a holdup for loan distributions – and in these challenging times, it’s not an option for money and time to be wasted.

Open Banking means lenders can develop an accurate picture of their customers’ financial position using up-to-date information. Combined with deep-learning technology and real-time data, lenders can access spending patterns, income, debt and identity verification to build a customer profile and personalise their lending options.

It’s time for lenders to do everything they can to support businesses’ survival. By digitising their lending cycles and harnessing services like Open Banking, lenders can act fast to determine customers’ borrowing options, fairly and efficiently. Not only will this help attract new customers to grow their base, but it will assist in a speedy economic recovery, and help many more businesses as we head into a post-covid world.