Lower costs
- Learned
- How their service costs compared with other providers.
- Did
- Compared providers with Coach and acted on the comparison.
- Result
- Cut costs within the three weeks.
A closer relationship with all your small business customers.
Narrative Coach brings relationship management to every small business customer in your app. Owners understand their needs, explore your products and come to your relationship managers better prepared, so your bank is involved earlier in their financial decisions.
Build stronger relationships with more small business customers.
Relationship managers can give regular attention to only part of a small business base. Owners value guidance from their bank when they receive it, yet few describe the relationship as strong, and many now take financial questions to AI first.
Room to strengthen relationships
Only 18%
of SMEs surveyed described a strong relationship with their bank or financial provider.
EY, The voice of the SME, 2021. 5,698 businesses with 10–249 employees in 16 markets.
Bank advice influences habits
94%
of US small businesses that received financial advice from their bank said it positively influenced their financial habits.
J.D. Power, 2025 U.S. Small Business Banking Satisfaction Study. 6,589 owners.
Acting on AI advice first
7 in 10
UK businesses act on AI-generated financial, tax or business advice before speaking to their accountant.
Censuswide for Ravical, 2026. 500 UK businesses.
When owners explore financial decisions outside your app, you can miss the conversation that leads to their next product. Coach brings that conversation into your app and gives owners a route to your products and team.
Someone for every business customer to turn to.
Coach gives each owner the kind of relationship that used to depend on a relationship manager, in your app and available at any hour. Your bank is involved while decisions are still taking shape, and your relationship managers can focus on the conversations that need them.
Better prepared
Owners who understand their cash position and commitments come to your team with clearer questions and better information.
Plans surface earlier
An ambition explored with Coach can become a need your team recognises in good time, instead of a request that arrives at the last minute.
From a customer need to your CRM.
Coach helps the owner set out what they need, the background and how they would like to be contacted. The owner chooses what to share, and nothing is sent until they agree.
The customer asks to speak to the bank and agrees what is shared.
Your CRM
Customer request from Narrative Coach
New- Contact reason
- Working capital loan of €40,000 for stock and packaging
- Background
- New supermarket contract worth €180,000 a year. The cash flow forecast prepared with Coach shows a €40,000 gap before the first payment arrives.
- Timing
- Funds needed by mid-February
- Contact
- Aoife, owner. Prefers a call in the morning
- Next action
- Relationship manager to review the forecast and call Aoife this week
When an owner asks to speak to you, the request and the context they agreed to share reach your relationship manager or designated team, at a destination agreed during set-up, such as your CRM.
Paid pilot, independently evaluated
Within three weeks, owners acted on what they learned with Coach.
Owners of established micro and small businesses in farming, e-commerce and retail, and professional services used Coach with their real business accounts for three weeks. An independent research agency recruited the participants, ran the pilot and evaluated it.
A change to advertising
- Learned
- Coach, working from the business’s figures, suggested adjusting advertising spend during a sales period.
- Did
- Adjusted the spend.
- Result
- The change was made during the sales period itself, not after it.
Tracking in one place
- Learned
- Balances, income and spending across all their accounts, including those held with other banks, in one view.
- Did
- Moved routine financial tracking out of spreadsheets and mental notes.
- Result
- The consolidated view became the feature they returned to most.
Other participants rethought their stock planning and found grants they had not known were available.
24h
Every participant connected their business accounts through Open Banking within 24 hours of the welcome email.
93%
of the available automated flows were activated during the pilotFlows produce reports on request, such as a financial performance report or a competitor and market report.
After the pilot, participants reported more trust in AI guidance, a better understanding of their financial position and a stronger sense of control. They rated their likelihood of continuing to use Coach at 8 out of 10, a stated intention measured at the end of the pilot.
About this pilot: a deliberately small group of established businesses, so that each could be studied closely. The agency’s evaluation had four stages: a survey before the pilot, three weeks of live use with feedback in the app, a survey afterwards and in-depth interviews. Coach explained what it saw in the data and suggested options. It did not provide regulated financial advice, and every decision remained with the owner. The results describe this group and are not a forecast for other customers.
Guidance your risk and compliance teams can review.
Coach helps owners understand and prepare. Your institution’s advice, assessment and approval processes continue to apply.
Guidance, not advice
Responses are tested against the markers of a personal recommendation. Coach does not make credit or eligibility decisions.
Checked before display
Generated content is checked before an owner sees it. Failed outputs are withheld and reviewed.
Your product range
Coach mentions only products from the range you configure, and only where one is relevant to what the owner is working on. Decisions on them stay with your bank.
Data protected
Hosted on Microsoft Azure in the EEA, encrypted in transit and at rest, and not used to train AI models.
Getting started
We suggest starting with an evaluation: a defined group of small business customers, success measures agreed with you and a review of the results with you. If you decide to proceed, Coach is embedded in your app and connected to your products and relationship managers.
See what Coach could do for your business customers.
We’ll give you a demo of Narrative Coach and discuss the customers you have in mind.