Danske Bank is continuing to work with some of Northern Ireland’s leading small businesses, with specialised business advisers based throughout the region and developing new digital solutions
Certainly, the majority of businesses trading in this part of the world across most key sectors fall into the small business category.
Department for the Economy figures from earlier this year showed four in ten businesses in Northern Ireland have turnover of less than £100,000 and just 12% had turnover of more than £1m.
Those numbers are a big part of the reason Danske Bank prioritises supporting small businesses in what is a fairly unique proposition to the market.
The Danske small business proposition includes 18 business advisers based in local communities throughout Northern Ireland, alongside a small business Hub who together act as a first point of contact for business customers with borrowing requirements.
All customers also have full access to Danske’s award-winning customer contact centre and the branch network for their day to day needs.
Ryan Mawhinney, head of small business at Danske Bank, says this area has long been a major focus for the bank.
“We’ve had a clear strategy for our small business customers for a number of years now. During Covid, our role really turned to supporting business with their immediate needs, and we provided over £600m of financial support in those few years alone. Now we are actively looking to attract new customers, as demonstrated by our recent switching incentive for small businesses.
“We have an extensive, strong proposition for small businesses locally – we’re taking a two-pronged approach where we are developing our technology and providing digital solutions, but we also have local relationship managers on the ground. This local relationship approach is one which many other providers have moved away from in recent years,” Ryan says.
“Customers have really embraced the digital offering, but we hear they still want to be able to lift the phone and talk to someone who knows them and their business when they have a more complex need or challenge.”
Through Danske’s advisers and small business hub, customers have access to expertise in not only lending, but asset finance, trade finance, invoice finance and foreign exchange, with all these specialist teams locally based.
“We are seeing businesses active in the market,” Ryan says. “There is a constant cycle where businesses need to replace equipment and vehicles and so on. There was an increase in cash holdings post pandemic, but now we’re seeing customers using that cash combined with lending to invest and grow.
“Asset finance has been really busy as businesses have made capital investments this year and we have seen a demand for sustainable upgrades, such as solar panels, which is encouraging.”
Sustainability is an area Danske Bank has invested in significantly in recent years, developing the Climate Action Programme (CAP) with Business in the Community NI to help businesses understand and reduce their climate impacts. Just over 130 Danske customers of all sizes have taken part in the programme to date, and the bank is now looking at ways to make this more accessible to small businesses in 2024.
“All of our advisers have been through accredited carbon literacy training themselves. They are bringing that expertise to their customers. We find lots of small businesses do want to do something in terms of sustainability but they’re maybe not exactly sure where to start,” Ryan says.
“We can now show them great examples of customers who have been able to do business with much larger, international players having gone through our programme as they can demonstrate their sustainability credentials to those larger companies.”
In addition to its core services, Danske is providing support to small business owners in other ways too, for example partnering with local Enterprise Agencies to deliver HR, marketing, cyber security and sustainability advice to their tenants. These visits also involve Danske’s personal banking team, an acknowledgement that for owner-managed businesses personal banking needs are very closely aligned to business banking.
Ryan says that building relationships and communicating with customers remains at the heart of Danske’s approach to supporting small businesses.
“A lot of our new to bank business comes from referrals from our existing customers because of the relationships we have with them.
“We also see a lot of value in spending time at local events. As part of our partnership with Chartered Accountants Ulster Society, we’ve been supporting their Entrepreneurial Mindset conferences. They, and other similar events, are a great opportunity to interact with communities and meet local entrepreneurs, small businesses and intermediaries like solicitors and accountants,” he says.
More information about Danske Bank’s small business services can be found at danskebank.co.uk/smallbusiness or by calling the team on 0345 266 6555.
