Small businesses' must-haves: Speed, simplicity, capital

• Key insight: American Banker's 2025 Small Business Banking conference offered several panels and discussions about how banks can best serve small-business owners.
  
• What's at stake: Bankers see themselves as critical partners to small businesses who are navigating the financial challenges of running their own companies.
  
• Forward look: Banks have an important role to play in the success of small businesses.

The banking needs of small businesses took center stage this week at American Banker's 2025 Small Business Banking conference in Hollywood, Florida. The two-day event, which attracted bankers from around the country, offered a slate of panels and discussions devoted to financial challenges that small businesses face and how banks can help them.

Attendees heard from a mix of speakers, including Sekou Kaalund, the head of branch and small-business banking at U.S. Bancorp , who spoke about the impact of uncertainty on small-business owners, and Chris Ward, the new head of U.S. small-business banking at TD Bank, who offered tips on how banks and credit unions can better serve small businesses and micro businesses.

In a fireside chat Monday with American Banker Editor-in-Chief Chana Schoenberger, Kaalund emphasized the importance of banks maintaining dialogue with small-business owners. While banks can't control tariffs or inflation or interest rates, they can keep talking, Kaalund said.

"What we can do is ensure we're having those conversations with small-business owners," he said. "How can we serve those small businesses and get them to think about the future?"

Here are three other key takeaways from this year's conference.

Wanted: Simplicity, speed, good service and safety

Taking care of small businesses requires more than just making loans and offering checking accounts. Understanding the needs of small businesses is critical if banks want to retain those clients, according to Ward, who gave a keynote address Monday with Sandy Hanson, the small-business program director at Barlow Research, a market research firm for banks.

Focusing on speed, simplicity, service and safety, which Ward and Hanson called "the four S's" of small-business banking, is critical, the pair said. Small-business owners want to open bank accounts, and to send and receive payments and manage their cash flow with ease. So they're looking for speedy responses, quick delivery, easy-to-use platforms and solid service. And they want to run their businesses knowing there are fraud protections in place, Ward and Hanson said.

Ward pointed to TD's own small-business dashboard, which is accessible online and on the bank's mobile app. The dashboard puts various bank accounts into one place and offers cash-flow forecasting.

It's all about providing ease of use for small-business owners, Ward said. "Why do we do this? To help our customers be more successful by giving them the tools they need," he said.

Hanson said it's critical that banks deliver on what small businesses want. "They want it fast, they want it easy, and they want the security of knowing they can talk to a real person," she said.

Digital payment options are necessary

Small businesses want to get paid quickly, and they want transactions to be as frictionless as possible. But not every small business has the same needs, and banks need to recognize that, according to Kristen Link, a product manager at U.S. Bancorp whose job is to bring banking, software and payments products together into a seamless platform for small businesses.

When it comes to what banks can provide and how they can help organize those services for small businesses, "there are a couple of factors," Link said during a panel discussion with Zelle executive Mary Helen McElfresh about digital payment options. "We need to offer a broad range of solutions … and then we need to organize them in a way that makes sense for our users."

Zelle, a digital payment service used by banks to facilitate peer-to-peer payments, is increasingly popular among small businesses because of its speed and low cost, Link said.

McElfresh, who is vice president of fraud risk management at Zelle's parent company, Early Warning Services, said there's work being done to "make it easier" for small-business payments.

That includes improving QR codes and this month's launch of a small-business "Zelle tag," which provides a unique identifier for transactions, rather than using personal email addresses or phone numbers.

"We are always looking to innovate and trying to make things easier," McElfresh said.

SBA loans are still an option, even during government shutdown

The federal government shutdown is causing some stress for small-business owners who worry they won't be able to get a loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration, since SBA employees who would process the requests aren't working. But bankers said it's not all doom and gloom.

Even though the shutdown is nearing the one-month mark, banks can still take applications, underwrite loans and approve them, Nuno Francisco, a business banking market executive at Citizens Financial Group, said during a panel discussion.

"I think it's important for us, when those conversations come up, to keep an open dialogue with the customer that yes, the government is shut down, but the banks, the lenders, the credit unions are still taking requests," he said. "It's about how we position the program … and educate customers and empower them to understand that we're still going to process your loan, we're still going to underwrite it, we're still going to approve it."

Ravi Durbeej, an SBA business development officer at U.S. Bancorp, said it makes sense to keep moving the SBA loan process along, even as the government remains closed.

"We really want to maintain a positive attitude … and process as many loans so that when the government does reopen, we'll be in the best position to close as fast as we can," Durbeej said.