How banks can help their customers in times of COVID-19

In light of the COVID-19 outbreak and its impact on the economy, the German government and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz have agreed on a comprehensive aid package for companies in Germany. These measures are intended to help companies to cope with the corona crisis, e.g. through continued wage payments, and to secure their liquidity. The state-owned KfW Banking Group has the task to facilitate the short-term provision of liquidity assistance to companies (KfW corona assistance). Besides KfW, the house banks play a major role in granting loans and thus – ensuring business continuity. Banks must act now to support their customers in the application process!

How do companies obtain financial support?

Applications for bridging loans are made through the house banks. In view of the Corona crisis, they work in emergency mode – making it virtually impossible to arrange an appointment to apply for a loan. In addition, the required documents must be submitted in paper form, so that the process can take up to eight weeks even in times of no crisis. Even successful small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have only limited capital resources, which will probably not be sufficient to survive the corona crisis unscathed.

What do SMEs have to do?

Among other things, they need the following information when submitting their application

• an account or account overview of the last three months
• capital and cash budgeting
• the verification and identification of a confirmed bank account for the payment of the emergency aid

What can banks do?

Banks can do their part to help fight the pandemic. Their aim must be to provide small and medium-sized enterprises with loans quickly and unbureaucratically. This can only be achieved through a completely digital process. If this digital process is currently not available, third-party providers such as finleap connect can provide fast and targeted assistance.

How can finleap connect support banks in this process?

We offer our account service to banks to:

1. receive the necessary account overview, capital, and cash budgeting in digital form and

2. confirm the payment account

The bank achieves rapid implementation by integrating the connectivity widget, which banks use to speed up their loan applications by integrating their customers fully digitally. This includes both a lean identity check process and categorized account data for your risk classification/decision-making.

What opportunities are there for banks? 

There are several advantages for banks:

1.  Be able to provide tangible added value to the preservation of German SMEs and thus help German society to overcome the crisis

2.  Generate new business volume in the credit sector because you are both faster and more digital than other banks

Sounds exciting? Talk to us – with the offers in our ecosystem we always find a solution.

For a demo or to make an appointment at short notice, please contact Christian Hegeler, via inbound-connect@finleap.com.