Announcing the 2014 Greenwich Excellence Award Winners for Small Business Banking
 

Regions Bank outpaced all rivals by claiming 16 Greenwich Excellence Awards in Small Business Banking.

Multiple honors were also earned by M&T Bank with 14 Greenwich Excellence Awards, BB&T and PNC each with 13 and Frost Bank and Synovus Bank both with 12.

“These banks deserve special mention for excelling in service quality at a time when so many banks—including the largest national banks—are competing for scarce loan business by upping the quality and intensity of small business coverage and service,” says Greenwich Associates consultant Don Raftery.

Greenwich Excellence Awards recognize banks that deliver exceptional service quality to small business. Awards are given in 13 national banking and cash management categories, and in eight geographic categories.

Competition Raising the Bar in Service Quality
The profitability of U.S. banks has taken a hit from tough new regulations and from a stop-and-start economic recovery. In this environment, banks are targeting commercial lending as a source of asset growth. The only problem: Loan demand among small businesses has been limited and as a result, competition is fierce. 

Every year, Greenwich Associates asks small business owners and executives in the U.S. to rate their banks across a series of product and service categories. Over the past several years, these scores have climbed meaningfully.

The improvement in scores has in turn had a direct impact on the Greenwich Excellence Awards, which are given to banks that receive scores that top those received by rivals by a statistically significant margin.  This means as industry-wide scores rise, it gets harder for the best banks to achieve a level of separation. The result: In 2013 Greenwich Associates granted Small Business Excellence Awards to 43 banks; in 2014 the number fell to 34 out of more than 750 measured.