FinTechTalk: Streamlining complexity - new strategies for identifying and verifying SMBs  

On 15 July 2025, FintechTalk host Charles Orton-Jones was joined by Marcin Kuźmiński, Global Head of Onboarding  - Commercial; Maadhavi Bhhatia, Global Business Strategy & Compliance Leader | Digital Transformation Expert and Heidi Hunter, SVP Product, Markaaz. 

  

Challenges for SMBs 

SMBs usually start their business by serving their local markets. Problems arise when they enter new markets with different regulatory environments and financial products. It’s also key for SMBs to know their ecosystem when navigating these challenges. The root cause of why SMBs don’t get onboarding right is that they lack context.

 

To equip themselves with the right amount of data and intelligence, they must optimise, digitalise and automate first. SMBs’ top priority is liquidity, while financial institutions see them as much riskier than established businesses, therefore SMBs must do their best to convince banks that they are worth the risk.  

 

How should SMBs streamline their onboarding 

SMBs should consider how AI-driven agentic workflows can be incorporated into data collection points. A goal-based AI agent can request key information alongside the stages of the onboarding process based on the outcome of the previous stage.

 

An Ai agent could also identify data gaps and decide which data collection exercises can be done digitally and what types of documentation must be performed by humans to bridge the gap. Automated data collection is relatively straightforward using open banking and APIs. However, some processes will still need local experts for a few more years to access data under different jurisdictions.  

 

Regulators’ main concern is that banks take the responsibility for the decisions that AI solutions make. It’s also a major challenge to implement a system that can keep up with fast and frequent regulatory changes. Although fintechs are streamlined, digital-native enterprises, typically, there are incumbent banks behind them with legacy technology, who are also crucial to their ecosystem.  

 

The panellists’ insights 

• The main barrier for SMBs when improving their onboarding processes is that they don’t know what they don’t know. 
• The quality of the data on SMBs used at onboarding is key to deciding whether the bank should take the risk or not.  
• While everybody is talking about AI, it means different things for different people and adoption is still at about 20%.