Cash-flow management tools: The ability for small business customers to access digital cash flow management tools will enable them to have real-time insights based on financial data, accurate cash flow projections and forecasting, automated data entry and reconciliation for optimized efficiency and error reduction, seamlessly integrate accounts receivables and payables, and improve operational risk mitigation.
Transcription:
John Adams (00:14):
Welcome to our virtual event, and thank you for joining us. In this session, we're going to be speaking about cash flow management, which can be a particular challenge for small businesses. It's a large market; the small business payment market is expected to approach $30 billion by 2030, according to BII. So there's a lot at stake for banks. With me for this session are John "Tripp" Gavin, SVP of Enterprise Payments at Citizens, Todd Gardner, Head of Small Business Deposit Products for TD Bank, and Mark Smith, Head of Commercial, Digital and Strategy with KeyBank. I thought we'd start off with John, Todd, Mark. First of all, thank you. Welcome. Thank you for participating. Just start off, tell us a bit about your roles and what you do at your banks. We'll start with Todd.
Todd Gardner (01:04):
Sure, yeah, thanks, John. So Todd Gardner here. As you mentioned, I head up our small business deposits group here at TD Bank, so focused on everything liquidity, whether that's pricing rates or just the product management, product development side of things.
John Adams (01:27):
Mark.
Mark Smith (01:28):
Yeah, so Mark Smith, I run our commercial digital platforms here at Key, which we have two different ones. One supports primarily our small business and business bank clients, as well as one that supports our middle market and institutional clients. I also have responsibility for our treasury onboarding organization as well as our commercial credit product organization.
John Adams (01:52):
Okay. And Tripp?
John "Tripp" Gavin (01:54):
Yeah. Hi everyone. Tripp Gavin from Citizens Bank. I lead the strategy function within our enterprise payments division, so I focus a lot on what are the new innovative things going on in the market, how we can utilize those to best serve our clients and grow as a bank. Very excited to be here on this panel.
John Adams (02:11):
Okay, great. Well, thank you. To jump right in, what is the biggest problem that small businesses have with cash flow management and what's causing that problem? I'll throw this out to each of the three of you. Todd.
Todd Gardner (02:30):
The biggest problem with cash flow management, I would say a lot of times in solutions that we've explored at TD, I think it's really key to get insights to our customers. If we're not delivering things that are applicable, or they don't show the full picture of someone's deposits or relationships, I think that's a struggle and really a challenge. So I think that's where we really try and deliver a solution that brings in the full picture, integrates with ERPs, and actually delivers tangible insights to customers on where they're at and where they're going with their cash flow management.
John Adams (03:21):
Mark.
Mark Smith (03:22):
Yeah, I'll take a little bit of a different turn on that. I think in the small business base, a lot of our clients don't necessarily have the power over their vendors or their supplier network that you typically see in a large middle-market institutional client. So they're kind of held back. They don't really have much leverage in terms of extending their days payable on that side. While at the same time, they really have to focus on how do they collect their money faster, do they have access to credit to actually meet their needs? And that's where we see a lot of small business clients really start to think around product solutions a little bit differently in that space, where how do you leverage a small business credit card or a PCard to help extend some of their day payables that are out there to try to get a little bit of capacity there. The other is how do you actually collect some of that revenue faster from a merchant or Zelle? Obviously, that's a much bigger trend that we're seeing in the small business space as well: how do they actually get their receivable faster so that they can work through that cash flow? Building off of what Todd said, one of the biggest pieces is the owner of the business, maybe they have somebody that's working in the finance department, but forecasting their cash flow is really, really hard. So I think always trying to help our clients understand how can they forecast better in that space and then what are the different product solutions that are out there that can help extend that working capital flip they need to run their business.
John Adams (04:48):
Tripp.
John "Tripp" Gavin (05:04):
Can you hear me any better now?
John Adams (05:05):
Yes, yes, I can hear you now.
John "Tripp" Gavin (05:06):
Okay, sorry about that. I was just saying that cash flow at the end of the day is downstream of a lot of decisions that are made, whether it's the inventory levels you hold, your pricing strategy, how you're accepting payments, what your terms are with your vendors, and how you're managing your people. So cash flow can be a great indicator of how those decisions have been made. Are they positive? Are there things that need to change? But actually aggregating those decisions and getting insights from them is where there's a real challenge. And that's where tools out there that Citizens and others have launched, as well as just consistent conversations with those trusted advisors, be it a banker, a CPA, or a lawyer, can really help just build that confidence over time.
John Adams (05:51):
It would seem that small businesses have staffing differences from large companies, where the department that would deal with supply chains, cash flow, treasury management is so much smaller. They may wear a couple of hats. How does that impact how you approach them as a bank? Is there a learning curve or a need for a different approach than you would have with a large corporate? Mark.
Mark Smith (06:29):
Yeah, we refer to the small business owners that we talk about as "CEOs," but they're the "Chief Everything Officer." They have to wear all the different hats in the organization. They have to do HR, they have to own the sales teams, they have to do the finance, wear a lot of different hats. When you look at where they make most of their money, it's not doing the reconciliation necessarily of their payments or balancing their books. It's actually excelling products or service and delivering to their clients. So what we do is we are constantly trying to help advise our clients: how do we help them run their offices more efficiently, faster, so they can focus on the ways that they actually generate money for themselves and their organizations? How do they do that in a way when they have all these different hats that they can do that effectively?
(07:18):
I think that is, as you talked about in your kickoff, small businesses make up a very large percent of the economy, but people are forced in those roles to play a lot of different hats and manage a lot of different responsibilities. That's where we try to simplify it in terms of what are the payment solutions that you're providing to clients? What's the data that they can use to reconcile their balance sheet much faster? How do you integrate into some of their QuickBooks or other ERP systems that they use so they can spend more of their time focused on their business value versus their financial ledger side of the house?
John Adams (07:54):
Tripp.
John "Tripp" Gavin (07:54):
In addition to all that, focusing on how we can serve our customers across channels. A lot of these business owners or the people working for these business owners may not be in the same location. They may be doing a lot of their banking activity late at night or on the road, so making sure that the services we have are available to them when and where they need them has been a big focus of ours. Also, how we can increase control, knowing that a lot of these businesses do have employees who are multi-tasking. How can we help business owners, business managers delegate some of that responsibility in a controllable way that limits their risk but also allows them to focus on their core business operations and expanding?
John Adams (08:42):
Todd?
Todd Gardner (08:43):
Yeah, I think all of that. How we think about it is, and I think you hit on the beginning, a lot of these owners are the ones that we're really interacting with and they are wearing a bunch of different hats. This isn't necessarily an AP clerk or someone. I think just making it intuitive and making the value proposition really easy, providing additional capabilities for folks that really want to get in the weeds, but also just making it intuitive enough that someone can pick this up and get some insights or understand where they're at upfront and not make it a full-time job to understand.
John Adams (09:27):
Obviously, there's a lot going on right now in the world. I guess to start with an issue such as trade policy tariffs, how does that impact small businesses in the United States in a way that may be different, less or more than it would other businesses? How do you communicate with your clients? Are there certain products that you have to address these issues or just other services that are key to this? Mark, what are your thoughts on that?
Mark Smith (10:03):
Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there. I think when it comes to some of the tariffs, obviously this is a very fluid situation, evolving what's in, what's out. I think we actually haven't seen that much material change in how our small business clients think about that overall. We're still seeing credit quality actually improve across the space, which makes us feel good around our clients' ability to manage through that and the cash flows that they have, irrespective of the noise that's out there. I think just the other day we saw the consumer price index come in more favorable than we would've expected given some of the tariff noise. So I think overall, we're still seeing it be healthy in that space. With the challenges around is there inflationary pressure that they have to manage? It is one that's really tough for small business because in larger institutions, they have a much broader supply chain that they have the ability to spread the pain across as those things happen. In small business,
(11:11):
as I said before, they don't really have the purchasing power that large organizations have. They don't have as many supply chain partners to spread that across. So there is an opportunity for them to think around, "How do I deal with that?" I think the thing that we've seen in the space emerge is kind of more on the merchant acceptance side. They're actually passing service charges onto the actual consumers versus just burying that cost themselves. So we've seen that trend in a couple of different industries play out where it used to be much more focused on government and certain real estate transactions. We're seeing a lot more businesses start to think around, "Do I pass some of my merchant accepting costs onto the ultimate consumers or buyers?"
John Adams (12:00):
Todd, what are some of your views on this?
Todd Gardner (12:03):
Yeah, I definitely agree with you, Mark, on the merchant acceptance pass-through. I think in addition to that, we've, I would say, seen a little bit of hesitancy on probably the CapEx side of things. Not knowing what's going to happen or where things are sort of trending, I think people are a little more hesitant to commit to long-term plans. So I think we've probably just seen a little more hesitation on that front, but I don't think it's really affected most of our portfolio in a really significant way.
John Adams (12:49):
Tripp, how about you?
John "Tripp" Gavin (12:51):
Yeah, I would just add I also don't think we've seen it affect our portfolio in a really substantial way yet. I think there has just been more interest in understanding some of the dynamics of the business. Even if these customers are not transacting internationally and bearing any tariffs or anything like that themselves, there's a good chance that some of their inputs from their wholesalers or whoever they're buying from are. It's just highlighted that need to have greater cash visibility, greater flexibility around payment options. The merchant example is one where if you can actually create the way for that fee to be passed through, or you can speed up the actual settlement of payments, or extend the day payable cycle, I think those are some of the levers that we'll continue to see pulled in absence of being able to spread the cost out over a bigger base.
John Adams (13:53):
What are some of the tools that are available now to manage this type of uncertainty that would not have been available, say, five or six years ago? How much technology can be brought in to help manage some of these uncertainties? Todd?
Todd Gardner (14:13):
Yeah, I don't really know what the... I'm not sure what the sort of last five years has really... I think there's certainly been a lot of advancements, and I think we will probably transition to AI at some point, but I think in being able to use AI to more effectively understand our customers' cash flow has really helped, and I think that's progressed. But I don't know, Mark, I'm curious if you guys have seen really anything recently kind of pop there?
John "Tripp" Gavin (14:55):
I think we've invested and seen good adoption of some of our open banking capabilities and how we can get the banking and payment data closer to the system of record that's really kind of controlling, whether it's the supply chain or it's the payables and receivable cycles, just to create that better context around how everything's working. That's the one that I think has changed and probably will continue to change, in addition to AI, of course.
Mark Smith (15:25):
Yeah, from my side, I think it's a little bit... I would say some of the traditionally, a lot of the payment rails, the sophisticated stuff we had on our global treasury management platforms are available for our largest clients. And how do you actually simplify that down for a small business? As Todd talked about before, you got to have it simple and transparent. So I think that people have started to pay attention to how fintechs do it. So how do you think more around, "How do I want to get my money to a certain place and what's the cost for that?" and simplify that versus talking about payment rails, or how do you want to actually execute? Is it an ACH? Is it a wire? Is it a Zelle transaction? How do you simplify that for a business owner? So I think there's been a lot of maturation in the banking space around how do we simplify that message, and I think that's starting to resonate. I also think some of the fintechs have pushed us, and some of us have partnered really well with fintechs to provide some of those cash flow solutions to our clients, to integrate some of the AR/AP side of the house, to make that a much better, easier, transparent experience for our clients. And so I think that some of that partnership with fintechs for the last several years has also made that easier. On the forecasting tariff side, I think that's really hard to deal with that because it is such a fluid situation.
John Adams (16:53):
You've spoken a little bit so far about learning curve and complexity. How important is it for banks when they're communicating with small businesses to move around jargon? We've said "payment rail" a couple of times. How important is it to come up with language that is more amenable to a business owner who's not a banker, and what are some tips do you have to do that? Tripp?
John "Tripp" Gavin (17:26):
One way we've gotten around that is to really focus on what's the value that's being delivered, whether it's financial, operational, or security related. That tends to just resonate more. If we can just put it in that parlance and really get a clear articulation of what is our customer really going to be getting out of this, that's probably the biggest way. I'd say a lot of our customers are also just interacting with us digitally, so how are we focusing on the experience and making our tools as easy to use and explore, and facilitate that self-discovery, self-enrollment, self-usage? That's been another big focus. As we've gone through some of our more recent product launches and done those building sessions of where are we actually getting that feedback, seeing how customers are using it, and made those revisions, we've started to see those dividends pay off.
John Adams (18:25):
Mark.
Mark Smith (18:26):
Yeah, so I think I hundred percent agree with Tripp on the digital assets, the simplification approach of what's that ledger view so they can reconcile, self-serve. A huge opportunity in that space. We find that most of our clients would rather digitally do something to solve their issue than call their banker or their treasury officer to help them through that. The other part that we've also done internally to help in that discussion is we built out an internal certified cash flow advisor program. So all of our bankers, all of our treasury people in the small business space are going through training in order to have that best conversation with our clients. So we can figure out in our key conversations, where are our clients stuck? Where are they spending their time and what are the different solutions or integrations we have to actually solve where the client's spending a bulk of their time? Do they want to reconcile in our online banking platform? Do they want to do that in their QuickBooks or other ERP system? How do we make that the most efficient for them? We talk around payment execution and how do we do that the most effectively for them, but it's also how do you get that data moving so they can spend less and less time doing reconciliation work.
John Adams (19:38):
And Todd?
Todd Gardner (19:39):
Yeah, totally agree. I think we tend to probably, in banking in general, focus on the product-specific name. A good example that comes to mind on my end is reverse positive pay. That doesn't necessarily mean anything to a customer. The way that fraud protection and making sure you're safe really resonates. So thinking about the things that we offer, our solutions as "jobs to be done," whether that's maintaining liquidity or getting paid or making payments, and then how do we fit our products into those verticals, but make it in a way that a small business owner can understand. Then I think, Mark, you touched on it: ensuring that our sales organization, whether it's relationship managers or store colleagues, if they need to be conversant in it in the same way that we are. So really trying to drill that into them as well and have them really talk about it not as products, but as ways that we can help partner with our customers to solve their financial needs.
John Adams (20:51):
Real-time payments like RTP, what is, if any, the use for small business payments, cash management? How can these innovations be helpful there? Have you seen or learned anything so far from real-time payments, and how it can be helpful to small businesses? Mark, if you've noticed anything.
Mark Smith (21:17):
Yeah, so I would say on the RTP side, we pretty much see that more of a larger institutional as where we see some of that volume going through there, not really at all on the small business side. Zelle is obviously a lot, with Early Warning System, a lot of demand in that space around that scenario where we're investing in how we bring that experience to life and meaningful from a business perspective. A lot of people deal with it in their consumer space, but how do you also have some of that risk management approach that I know Tripp was talking about before, and how do you have the people with the right access, with the right controls to manage that Zelle experience? That's where we're investing this year and going to be launching stuff next year on how do we provide that for our clients.
John Adams (22:06):
Todd?
Todd Gardner (22:08):
Yeah, I think it probably does skew more towards larger middle market from an RTP standpoint, but immediate payments, that's in some ways more applicable to small business than anywhere else because there's just not as much float. So you need to be able to send payments or receive payments more real-time. So I do think there's some applicability there. I think still trying to figure out where it plugs in and how it interconnects with things like Zelle. But yeah, I think definitely curious to sort of figure that out over the next few years.
John Adams (22:51):
Tripp,
John "Tripp" Gavin (22:53):
Just a good call out, Todd, to bring us back to not talking about rails and talking about the value and what it can actually do for a customer to the last question. We have seen some adoption around real-time payments for our small business customers. The nuance there is really around access and how we can actually enable customers to do that in a secure way. Whereas our large corporates might be doing something file-based or they have some type of API integration, that's not always an option for a small business. So you do need to have that kind of digital UI that could allow them to initiate a real-time payment. It doesn't always have to be that you're paying a supplier. We've seen use cases around, "How am I moving money to myself?" and how I want to just do that faster. In that world, you do see a lot of fintechs kind of leading in that space. They have just adopted that things should be immediate, and banks do have a role that we need to provide that level of service if that is what's expected.
John Adams (24:03):
How prevalent is it still, I haven't written this in a couple of years, for small businesses, particularly very small businesses, to be using consumer financial products for business purposes? Is this something that's changed where there's more of a segmentation? If there is, how do you manage that? Is it really necessary to migrate small businesses to more of a business banking, business payments platform? Tripp?
John "Tripp" Gavin (24:36):
I would say it's pretty prevalent. I would say that across products, we'll see businesses operating, whether it's out of a consumer deposit account, using consumer versions of online banking, and probably particularly in consumer credit cards, where the rewards are commingled with whatever they're doing in their own household. So it definitely happens. The way we are really thinking about, "How do you get away from that?" and where we've seen some innovation is more fit-for-purpose tooling coming out. You can look at historic bill pay solutions in online banking. We're really just consumer or maybe consumer-plus at best. More activity in that space recently, where there is a lot more focus on the things that make a difference: the control, the delegation, the speed of payment. I think that will continue where you see that focus on how do we create bespoke, fit-for-purpose solutions for the business banking space. That really gets back to your point that this is a huge percentage of our economy. There are millions of small businesses out there, and they share some of these needs, and we've got to serve them.
John Adams (25:50):
Mark.
Mark Smith (25:51):
Yeah, so actually in our Key Business Banking online platform, we actually allow our clients to integrate their consumer accounts with their business accounts so they can manage across both those. As Tripp talked about just a second ago, how do you move money between accounts, potentially between your personal and your business? You can do that pretty seamlessly in our platform so that a client can log in. They can see what's happening at their home life, they can see what's happening in their small business. Then I think the other part that we're also focused too around, as they mature as well, how does it then tie into private banking? So we've also got a Key Private Banking organization. How do we integrate some of that holistic wealth-building knowledge and access across that platform so it doesn't feel like, "Oh, I've got my consumer relationship with Key here, I've got my business relationship with Key here, and I've got my potentially private banking relationship here with Key."
(26:45):
How does it actually feel like one particular piece? You have one login, you see all that information, you can see what's happening across your entire ecosystem if you're the business owner. But if I want, say, Tripp's my employee or Todd's my employee, and I don't want them to see that, we can set that up so that they only see maybe the business side; they don't see all my personal, my wealth side of the house. That's how we think around it. We go back to the Chief Everything Officer. So how do you give them everything for what's happening in their business, in their professional life, or their personal life in a single pane of glass?
John Adams (27:17):
Todd?
Todd Gardner (27:18):
Yeah, it's definitely somewhat prevalent. We certainly see business customers, typically sole proprietors, still squeezed into a consumer product or solution. We definitely see the value in moving them into a business-specific product, but I think there has to be value, and it has to make sense for the customer to do that. Part of the key there is making that transition as seamless and easy as possible, where it's not a headache to move from a consumer deposit account to a business deposit account. So really sharing the value, making it as easy as possible, I think is where we try to focus on and just sort of chip away at the education side of it.
John Adams (28:14):
One thing I'll mention: this session is open to questions from the audience, so feel free to weigh in at any time. One of the things that came up very briefly early on is AI. AI is getting a lot of attention, it's getting a lot of investment. It's extremely early stage, particularly, I would imagine, in this space. What are some of the things that you're looking at now in terms of how AI can be used for small businesses, used by small businesses to manage their finances, and what are some of the potential use cases? Mark?
Mark Smith (28:50):
Yeah, I think first off, we're all consumers at the end of the day. I think we're all using it in some form or fashion in our personal life, so our clients are doing the same thing. So for Key specifically, we are much more focused on some of the internal opportunities around that from a risk management approach and as we think around servicing and support for our clients and how do we do that in the most effective way so we can provide the best experience, speed to resolution as things occur. If you look at, we know that they're using ERPs or other accounting software, there's a lot of that AI that's actually being baked into the different software platforms that they have at their fingertips today. So I think it's some work that we've got here at Key that we're pretty excited around, bullish on, but we also know our clients are also using AI in their everyday life and other parts of the platforms that they need to run their business. That's where it's going to be really interesting to see how this ecosystem pulls together over the long term as banks get more and more comfortable with potentially a client-facing lens in AI.
John Adams (29:53):
Todd?
Todd Gardner (29:54):
Yeah, same here. We're certainly looking at it internally just from an efficiency standpoint. One thing comes to mind is how we manage our customer complaints in that database and how do we categorize and understand trends and things of that nature. I don't know that we've really... I think we're still exploring probably customer-facing tools that we can deliver, but I think there's a lot of opportunity out there, and I'm really excited to see where that goes. I think we've talked about some of the cash flow forecasting and just being able to provide tools for our customers to better categorize and understand trends. I think if we don't figure that out as banks, fintechs are going to lean into it. So certainly a lot of different areas it can go, and I'm excited to see where the heat map takes us there.
John Adams (30:59):
Tripp.
John "Tripp" Gavin (31:02):
Similar on our side, lots of focus on internal use cases, at least to start: how we can just speed things up, get better information. Thinking more broadly outside the bank's walls, this will be really exciting to see. I imagine that a lot of the use cases are going to be as varied as the businesses that they're supporting. What works for one business is probably where it can augment either a staffing issue or a process issue, and that might be unique to them and different from another business in a similar industry where the owner and employees have a different skill set. So it's going to continue to evolve.
John Adams (31:42):
How do you determine or assess which types of businesses may be more amenable to new technology than others? I wouldn't necessarily think it would be an age or a business category, but are there ways to tell where a new version of AI might be a good fit in the short term? Mark, do you have any thoughts on that?
Mark Smith (32:11):
You said age isn't one, but I think it actually kind of does play into that, more like what's the openness to thinking around running a business differently? I think we see a lot of clients that they've been running successful businesses for 20, 30 years, and this is what's worked, and they're very comfortable in that setting. We've also seen takeovers where a new, younger generation acquires a company that has been running like that. They start to leverage some of the new technologies out there, and they see pretty large expansion in their margins because of "How do we leverage data to actually know what clients are profitable, which clients are not profitable?" I think we do actually see a little bit of an age difference in terms of some of that acceptance more so than some of the industry components so far. But it's something that is a very interesting question. I don't have a perfect answer.
John Adams (33:07):
Todd.
Todd Gardner (33:08):
Yeah, I agree with you, Mark. I think age is probably as we look at it. You do sort of have to factor in, "Okay, who is the next generation in that company and what's their appetite going to be like?" But I think generally the younger business owners are potentially a little more interested in applying some of these newer tools. Then I think industries or verticals that are either directly or tangentially focused on technology tend to be more interested in adapting technology-related tools like AI. So I think that's also an indicator. We try to test and learn and really identify based on as many feedback sessions as we can get with real customers, like, "Hey, does this resonate with you and your business?" and try to extrapolate some of that. But yeah, I think still figuring some of it out for sure.
John "Tripp" Gavin (34:10):
In addition to age, I would add that there's just a flavor of discoverability around this right now. There are so many use cases, and this technology is still so new in its application to businesses that you'll probably see, from personal experience here, similar businesses in a similar market having two completely different approaches to a similar problem, one using AI, one not. I don't know if that can just be chalked up to "they haven't figured it out" or "they haven't wanted to do it," but they may have just not come across that as an option yet. It may not have crossed their radar as something they could do. So it's still really new. It's going to be, like I said, interesting to see how this evolves. I think eventually as a younger generation that has grown up with this, that is just accustomed to it being part of their lifestyle, kind of takes over some of these businesses through generational transfers or starts their own businesses brand new, we will continue to see this grow.
John Adams (35:19):
Along a similar vein, a lot of crypto, blockchain, stablecoins are beginning to get a lot of attention recently. Let's use stablecoins as an example. What use for small business cash management, their cash flow management, what use may there be? What use are you seeing now, and what do you think would need to happen for a mature use of, let's say, stablecoins by small businesses to help manage their cash flows? Todd, do you have thoughts on that?
Todd Gardner (35:52):
I'm going to flip to one of these guys first on that one. This is a tough one. I don't know that I have an off-the-cuff answer here.
Mark Smith (36:03):
I'll jump in here. I think domestically, I think we're still seeing, especially in the small business space, a little more of not great use cases. I'll say quickly emerging due to the recent Genus Act. Store of value was one that was at the top of the list of how does that play out, given the fact that interest cannot be given on stablecoins. The Genus Act kind of makes us think around things a little bit differently from store of value. The question that's still out there is the rewards component and what's the rulemaking that's going to happen in the reward space. So that's one I think we're actively monitoring and thinking around: depending on where those rules get set on the rewards, is there actually value potential out there for our clients from a store of value component, just like you have high-yield savings accounts out there, money market funds that match T-bills?
(36:59):
I think more to come there as we start to see what happens over the next several months from a rulemaking perspective. But I think if you tie back to there's a lot of volume that goes through stablecoins, but 90% of it's tied to Bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrency settlement. So there's a large volume, but we also see a lot of that coming from the crypto space. So in a small business space, we're still seeing what those use cases actually play out to be in a domestic setting, and we'll see where some of the rewards component land to see what actually is the opportunity for our small business clients to benefit from it.
John Adams (37:45):
Tripp, do you have thoughts on this?
John "Tripp" Gavin (37:49):
I would just agree with Mark. Domestically, I think it's still very nascent, and we're continually just looking at the use cases and where we can deliver value and what does updated regulation mean for us as a bank. There have been some areas within specific verticals where there's kind of been some inklings that stablecoin could offer some type of just efficiency gain to a process, less around the stablecoin itself, more around the distributed ledger programmability of the payment. Internationally, I'd say is where there's more clear of a use case. For small businesses that do transact internationally, there could be some benefits there of not having to really think about managing multiple currencies and exchange rates and everything like that and have a clear on/off ramp of how you actually pay international suppliers.
John Adams (38:48):
All right, getting close to time, about five minutes left. If there was a piece of advice that you'd have for bankers who were listening in terms of what you've learned helping small businesses manage their cash flow, if there was one or two important things that you think would be useful for them in their work, what would they be? Todd, do you have thoughts on that?
Todd Gardner (39:14):
Yeah, I can take that one, John. Where I really tend to focus on is it always comes back to delivering for customer needs. I think I hinted at it earlier, but I think sometimes, at least myself, my organization, we can get focused on product specifics or the nuances there. But I think if we focus on delivering for customers and what they're looking to do, and really boil it down to that, I think that's where we've sometimes just taken a step back and been like, "Okay, how do we make whether it's the onboarding process easier, or whether it's just money movement on the channel that our customers want to do that on? How do we solve those problems?" And I think there's just a lot of opportunity there. So that's my piece of advice is just to remain as focused as you can on solving customer pain points and customer needs.
John Adams (40:21):
Mark.
Mark Smith (40:23):
For us, the value has really come to how do we provide expertise to our clients? I talked a little bit around our cash flow advisory program: how do we actually provide better consulting advice there, and how do we simplify it? People on this line, we live and breathe payments every day. We probably memorize the Nacha windows. We know all that stuff. A small business client doesn't need to know that. They don't care about that. So how do you simplify in terms of "How do they get money, how do they send money, and how do they do that efficiently and cost-effectively?" Initially, how do you simplify that? How do you then manage their credit relationship with some of the accounts payable, accounts receivable process they have to manage their cash flow? So I think that's where we see a lot of value. When we start to think around simplifying the payments experience, it's very clear that if I have a small business client or business banking client on my up-market treasury platform, it's too complex. The NPS results show that where if you get them on the right platform in a simplified approach where they can reconcile, they can make things more based upon that timing and understanding, the NPS is a multiple of where they would be on a traditional treasury platform. So I think that simplification, make it simple, easy, transparent, and provide expertise is really important.
John Adams (41:41):
Tripp.
John "Tripp" Gavin (41:44):
I mean, those are great answers. They're hard to follow. I would just reiterate, focusing on the experience. I think that's really where we'll see a difference in adoption, customer satisfaction. When I say experience, I mean that broadly. Not just when things work, when things don't work, how are those issues resolved, be it with the banker, contact center, and then just tie it back to the value that a customer is going to get from it. I mean, at the end of the day, I think that's really the thing that they're looking for: that value, that insight, and to know that it's going to be a good experience banking with you.
John Adams (42:18):
If there was one innovation, technology, new product, or market move that's on the horizon that has you excited for the next year in this area, what would it be? Mark?
Mark Smith (42:34):
Yeah, so we're going to be launching Zelle here in the next year. That's the number one thing we hear from our clients every day. As Todd talked about, "How do you get client feedback?" We're really excited around meeting that client need in the space. I think the other part is, how do we continue to improve the integrations with all the different ERPs that our clients leverage? Most people don't want to live in their online banking. They want to live in where they run their business. That's where we're excited to continue to build those deeper and deeper integrations where our clients live and breathe every day.
John Adams (43:07):
Todd?
Todd Gardner (43:08):
Yeah, I think while I'm excited about the existing products we have, I think we still have opportunities at TD around grouping and product, bundling them together so that from a pricing or awards or just an onboarding standpoint, we can group all of that together in a seamless way. So I think there's some exciting stuff on the roadmap that we've got there just around making it more of an all-in banking experience for our small business customers. That's really what I'm excited to be leading over here.
John Adams (43:47):
Tripp.
John "Tripp" Gavin (43:55):
Okay. Am I off mute now? It's funny, didn't press anything. So I was just saying digital integration. When we look at the digital products we're offering, we have some really exciting enhancements coming to bear in both the immediate term and over our planning horizon. As we've looked at the market, I think we're continuing to see more tools come online that don't sit alongside the digital experience but can become a core component of that and really facilitate that just a little bit overused word, "seamless" experience, the kind of self-service ability and self-discovery of it. So I think that's going to be an area where we continue to see innovation and new things coming online.
John Adams (44:47):
Okay. Well, great. We're at time. I wanted to thank you for joining me today, Mark, Todd, and Tripp. It was a great conversation. I appreciate your time, and I want to say thank you for everybody who dialed in to watch. Good luck, be well, and have a good 2025. Thank you, John. Great talking with all. Thank you.
Mary Ellen Egan (45:29):
Hi everybody. Thank you again for joining us. A big thank you to our speakers and our moderators, and thank you all for attending. Please join us on October 27th and 28th for our Small Business Banking Conference, which will be held in Hollywood, Florida. We have a terrific lineup of speakers and keynote, and we'll be continuing on today's discussions to talk about some of the challenges facing small businesses and how your banking partnerships can help. Also, please mark your calendars for our Community Banking Virtual Summit on September 25th. Thank you again to all our speakers and moderators, and thank you all for attending.
Cash-Flow Management Tools Optimize Business Effectiveness & Closing Remarks
August 13, 2025 1:50 PM
46:10