Too Many Banks Are Sitting on a Small Business Growth Engine

There are 29.8 million businesses in the U.S. with no employees, generating $1.7 trillion in annual receipts, and much of that economic activity flows through personal checking accounts. Banks have understandably focused on identifying those businesses and moving them into business accounts.

But I think we have defined the opportunity too narrowly. Opening the business account is the beginning of the relationship, not the finish line.

Key insight: Small business owners often need advice, connections, and perspective from people who understand the realities of running a business like theirs. Banks already have something other providers cannot easily replicate: a portfolio full of customers facing similar challenges.

The opportunity: Use transaction data and AI to identify those communities, equip bankers with useful context, and make permissioned introductions between customers. That turns an existing customer base into a source of insight and practical value. Listen to the full podcast to learn more.

Need to know:

• Treat business-account conversion as the starting point. Once a sole proprietor moves into a business relationship, the bank has an opportunity to become more useful in the day-to-day realities of running that business.
• Use AI to understand the portfolio. Transaction data can reveal businesses hiding inside retail checking accounts and identify meaningful communities that traditional segmentation misses.
• Give bankers context before they make contact. A useful briefing can tell a banker who else in the portfolio looks similar, what businesses at that stage tend to struggle with, and what question might open a productive conversation.
• Turn customer networks into a permissioned advantage. Introductions between customers facing similar challenges can create value that product pricing alone cannot replicate.
• Start narrowly and learn. A single vertical, such as home services, can provide a practical proving ground for understanding whether the data, technology, and customer experience work.

The Business Account Is Only the Beginning

There is a $1.7 trillion blind spot sitting inside banks and credit unions today.

Approximately 6.8% of the U.S. economy comes from small businesses with no employees, with much of their activity flows through personal checking accounts.

We have generally approached this as a detection problem: Find those businesses, identify them as sole proprietors or other microbusinesses, and move them into business accounts.

The detection work matters. Nearly 87% of small business owners use the same provider for their business and personal needs, and 61% of those relationships began with personal deposits. That means the customer base that banks already have contains an enormous amount of potential small-business growth.

Key insight: But treating the business-account conversion as the finish line is a mistake. I know because I am one of these customers. I run a sole proprietorship spanning podcasting, video, research, writing, and speaking. My revenue comes from a dozen different directions, and the amounts swing significantly from month to month. My expenses look nothing like those of a traditional commercial borrower.

I moved into a business checking account early and have a business banker who reaches out every quarter. Yet in all those conversations, he has never proactively offered me anything I could not have found on the bank’s website in about 90 seconds.

The problem isn’t that my bank lacks information about me. It has a better view of my financial activity than almost anyone.

The problem is what it does with that knowledge.

Give Bankers Something Useful to Say

Small business owners often have questions that do not fit neatly into a product conversation.

When asked a question about running their business, 48% of small business owners say they call another business owner, according to Huntington’s 2026 Beyond Business Report. Barlow Research, which conducted the research, points to a broader pattern: small businesses often turn to accountants, attorneys, peers, or Google for advice rather than their bank.

That should make banks uncomfortable.

I don’t think the answer is simply to train bankers harder on products. I’ve seen where that leads. When the banker doesn’t have meaningful business experience or useful context about the customer’s situation, a relationship call can easily sound like a sales pitch.

There is another problem. Even a highly capable banker cannot see everything the institution knows.

The relevant insight may be scattered across checking accounts, business accounts, specialists, departments, and different systems. Nobody has assembled it into something the banker can actually use in a conversation.

That creates an interesting opportunity.

Key insight: My bank knows what I do. Somewhere inside that institution are other content businesses, creative shops, and people working through similar questions around revenue, expenses, clients, and growth. Yet we are effectively invisible to one another inside an institution that can see all of us.

Imagine changing that.