BUSINESS STRATEGY, SMALL BUSINESS TRENDS
Funding Circle | August 12, 2022
Funding Circle, a leading online small business lending platform, and Farm Bureau Bank, a financial institution focused on serving members of the Farm Bureau® and their neighbors in rural communities, have announced a partnership to provide capital to small business owners from all walks of life, including the agricultural community, across the country.
The partnership enables Farm Bureau Bank to purchase loans originated through Funding Circle, marking another step forward in a growing collaboration between Funding Circle and the banking community. The partnership combines the financial strength and longstanding client relationships of Farm Bureau Bank with the risk models powered by Funding Circle’s world-class machine learning and technology platform to deliver high-quality loan products to small business owners.
“Our work with Farm Bureau Bank reflects our ongoing commitment to identifying and pursuing partnerships that allow us to support affordable funding options for diverse small business owners across a variety of sectors and needs, We are excited about the positive impact this partnership will have on small business owners in communities throughout the country who play a critical role in supporting their local economies.”
-Vipul Chhabra, Managing Director of Funding Circle US.
A recent study published by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve found that Funding Circle has been able to expand credit access to underserved small business owners who are not likely to receive funding from traditional lenders, and has done so at a lower cost to borrowers. The study also noted Funding Circle’s partnerships with community institutions made it possible for those banks to reach new customers during the pandemic. The collaboration between Funding Circle and Farm Bureau Bank will help mitigate the challenges that many small business owners face when seeking access to working capital for their business. While Farm Bureau Bank has traditionally focused on serving rural communities, its partnership with Funding Circle will allow the bank to fund loans for small businesses across the country and all industries.
“For over 20 years, we have remained committed to providing banking services and support to Farm Bureau members in rural America and across the country. We are enhancing our commercial banking services to better support the financial needs of business owners throughout the communities our members live in, Access to Funding Circle’s loans allows us to strengthen our investments in local communities by broadening the funding opportunities available to entrepreneurs and small business owners across the US.”
-Will Hileman, President and CEO of Farm Bureau Bank.
About Funding Circle
Funding Circle (LSE: FCH) is a small and medium business (“SMB”) loans platform. Since launching in 2010, investors and lenders including banks, community development financial institutions, specialty finance companies, asset management companies, insurance companies, government-backed entities, and funds - have lent approximately $18 billion to over c.120,000 businesses globally.
About Farm Bureau Bank
Since 1999, Farm Bureau Bank has focused on providing products and services for Farm Bureau members and their communities across the country while delivering an exceptional banking experience. Farm Bureau Bank shares your interests, understands your background, and works to support your livelihood. For more information about Farm Bureau Bank, please visit our website at www.farmbureau.bank.
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TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS STRATEGY
Sage | August 10, 2022
Sage (FTSE: SGE), the leader in accounting, financial, HR and payroll technology for small and mid-sized businesses, announced the Canadian release of Sage Payroll, which integrates accounting, payroll and HR functions into a single unified platform with Sage Accounting. The new, cloud-first solution from Sage is uniquely positioned to enable small businesses, HR and accounting teams, to manage payroll and employee data in one platform with employee self-serve features, to help their business flow.
Delivering on its promise of continuous improvement and innovation, Sage has responded to customer needs to deliver a cloud payroll experience that helps solve today’s most pressing business challenges. With Sage Payroll, small business owners can pay their employees anytime and anywhere, with the platform automatically calculating the value of each employee’s individual payment based on their hourly pay or salary.
Rather than forcing small businesses and their accounting and HR teams to juggle between multiple solutions and chase after employee data, Sage Payroll centralizes employee records and automates time-consuming HR processes with ease. This helps to minimize time-wasting, manual work and human error mistakes while empowering small businesses to focus on what matters most – their people and their customers.
“For many SMBs, digital tools boost productivity and reduce cost while supporting hard-working teams to get work done more efficiently, With Sage Payroll, Canadian small business owners and accountants can now run their payroll, accounting, and HR processes from a single dashboard, making it easier to pay staff and track and manage HR information all in one place, to drive efficiencies and empower the workforce of today.”
-Steve Ryujin, VP, Small Business Segment, Sage Canada
And because Sage Payroll is integrated with Sage Accounting, business owners and their accounting staff need not worry about manually syncing payroll and accounting, saving them both time and effort. The software is also CRA Compliant and aligned with changing tax legislation.
Sage Payroll is designed to meet the administrative needs of Canadian small businesses. As a business grows from a sole proprietorship to a thriving company with hundreds of employees and performance targets, Sage can provide the right add-ons to accommodate every stage of their business growth.
About Sage
Sage exists to knock down barriers so everyone can thrive, starting with the millions of small and mid-sized businesses served by us, our partners and accountants. Customers trust our finance, HR and payroll software to make work and money flow. By digitizing business processes and relationships with customers, suppliers, employees, banks and governments, our digital network connects SMBs, removing friction and delivering insights. Knocking down barriers also means we use our time, technology and experience to tackle digital inequality, economic inequality and the climate crisis. Learn more at https://www.sage.com/en-ca/
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TECHNOLOGY, FINANCE
TreviPay | August 10, 2022
Global B2B payments and invoicing network TreviPay today announced the launch of its Small Business Supplier Network (SBSN) across the United States, the industry’s first payments network built for banks and their small business customers. Following TreviPay’s recent launches of specialized networks for large enterprises and midmarket businesses, the SBSN completes TreviPay’s objective to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes.As a fully integrated, end-to-end payments network running in parallel with card payments, the SBSN enables banks, as members of the network, to deliver a new white-labeled structured financial service to small business suppliers that sell to business and government entities on invoice payment terms. TreviPay, which has a legacy of being the preferred B2B payment method of thousands of corporate sellers and their buyers around the world, will partner with banks to empower small business suppliers to offer flexible payment terms to their customers while getting paid virtually real-time and risk-free without incurring debt.
According to research commissioned by TreviPay, American small businesses with 100 or fewer employees extend approximately $5 Trillion in B2B trade credit to their business and government customers every year when allowing them to pay on invoice terms (e.g., net 30, 60, 90+ days) - the original “buy now, pay later.” Extending trade credit to business customers is commonplace and often considered necessary to remain competitive, attract new or larger customers, and deepen existing relationships, all while building loyalty and driving retention. However, small business suppliers still fund most of the trade credit they extend from their own working capital. This long-standing, inefficient use of their limited cash flow is ultimately an impediment to their growth and resiliency.
TreviPay’s SBSN allows member banks to expand their current small business product offerings by providing a safe and profitable way to tap into the largely unpenetrated small business B2B trade credit market, arguably the largest growth opportunity for small business banking. With SBSN, member banks can customize their solution, define and support their go-to-market strategies, control and manage their risk policies and set supplier fees, all while managing to their established exposure targets, growth rates, and profitability. Additionally, by joining the SBSN, banks can launch this new product without capital investments or technology integrations.
“Our vision for the Small Business Supplier Network is to create the technological infrastructure and operating model to deliver a new structured financial solution capable of eliminating small business trade credit the same way the credit card networks virtually eliminated B2C trade credit for retailers, Working together, TreviPay and member banks have a real opportunity to transform the inefficient B2B trade credit market and give small businesses a better way to do business so they can re-secure their position in the U.S. economy.”
-Rissi Lovern, Head of Small Business Markets at TreviPay
Over the last 20 years, we have seen the small business trade credit market become increasingly stretched with cash flow pressure building to intolerable levels. This is especially true when small businesses are on both the extending and receiving end of trade credit,” continued Lovern. “With every recession or economic downturn, this phenomenon creates a long and arduous road to recovery. By combining the strength and reach of our financial institution members with TreviPay’s proven B2B payments network and our mutual care for the U.S. small business market, we can strengthen the backbone of small businesses. To learn more about the SBSN and how you can add the solution to your banking tech stack, visit TreviPay’s Small Business Supplier Network solution page.
About TreviPay
TreviPay is the global B2B payments and invoicing network built to optimize trade between buyers and sellers. With more than four decades of experience building networks, TreviPay is the preferred B2B payment method of corporate buyers and sellers globally, processing $6 billion in transaction volume across 32 countries, 19 currencies and 90,000 active buyers. TreviPay gives clients the power to offer trade credit, and is trusted by major brands – with 80,000 selling locations – to deliver invoices with net terms and guaranteed payment across all sales and distribution channels. TreviPay has created the only fully managed payment and invoicing network to support B2B commerce of the future. For more information, visit trevipay.com.
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