It is a very old saying that “you reap what you sow”. For too long small business has been getting the rough end of the pineapple from the major banks.

Despite many years of loyalty and continually keeping their end of the bargain, many small businesses have not been treated well by the major banks.

Confronted with comments such as “nothing personal, we have just had a change of policy”, or “we no longer have an appetite for this style of business”, small business have taken this lack of support very personally.

For years, the banks have ignored the plummeting loyalty sentiment statistics shown for small business as they were not seeing the level of account closures and client departures to reflect those very damning statistics.

What they failed to recognise and continue to do so are 2 crucial aspects:-

1. Small business owners have long memories, take what happens to them very personally and will have their day of satisfaction.
2. Those small business clients won’t move until they know it is both safe to do so and they have a viable alternative to migrate to.

So the real question for many is not IF it’s WHEN.

The recent independent statistics on the question of “what is the likelihood that you would consider a new provider into the Australian market?” the predominant response is VERY LIKELY

So what does this mean?

In our view it simply means that the existing major banks should be very fearful of new players coming into the market as the departure of long term small business clients may well turn from a trickle to a flood.

If that does happen, the major banks will truly “reap what they sowed” and it won’t be the crop that we were hoping for.

Read the up-to-date research note by East & Partners.

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