London-based Finadvant has launched its business banking platform for SMEs that are involved in international trade. Founded by a group of ex-Bloomberg and City veterans, the company is on track to create a banking ecosystem for their niche customers by offering various services essential for global trade.
The business banking offering for SMEs in the UK is vast and often seems overwhelmingly saturated, although there is always a niche and an overseen opportunity. High street banks are often under regulatory pressure. Some of them are not accepting new business customers at the moment, and others have several month-long queues leading to lengthy and frustrating account opening processes. With the recent pandemic and free movement restrictions, a simple visit to your local high street branch can also be challenging. Digital banks mainly target small businesses and freelancers, and it is harder to receive a personalised business banking service from an online bank with global banking digitalisation.
Finadvant have identified the gap in the offered services and plan to deliver an alternative banking experience consolidating the best from the high street and digital banks. The existing system neglects the needs and realities of cross-border payments, especially for SMEs. Finadvant’s challenge is to make international payments more accessible to businesses and set a new standard of trading without borders across the global payments ecosystem.
Finadvant aims to deliver medium-sized trading companies a level and quality of banking service that high street banks would not typically deliver. A personal attitude from a dedicated relationship manager who will always be just a phone call or a chat message away.
Katya Dorofejeva, Finadvant co-founder and CEO, says: “Our goal is to create a personal banking experience by dealing with our customers as business partners, getting to know their business, understand their needs and offering the best solutions. We aim to create a business banking ecosystem where globally trading companies and their counterparties will be able to deal with their trading operations and money transactions quickly and hassle-free.”
Leonid Prujanski, co-founder and CFO/COO, added: “A considerable component of the process is the deep understanding of business during the onboarding process, use of best practices to assess our clients straight away and provide them with the necessary solution for their business needs. We know that we enter a competitive market, and there are a lot of challenges ahead. But we also know who our future customers are, what key needs and struggles they experience and how to address those and deliver a value-added service.”
Post-Brexit, Britain will rely more on global trade, while the banking services are not fully adapted to the new reality. Finadvant is on course to close the gap and become the go-to service provider in the UK with a European expansion plan later this year.
