Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: As a small business signing up for NorthOne, you sign the small business up for QuickBooks as well.

Eytan Bensoussan: We work with a lot of accounting suites. QuickBooks is one. A large number of our customers use them, so it’s top of mind. In many ways, what we’re trying to do is to be humble in the face of the existing operations of the business. You have an accounting suite. We’re not going to tell you to change that. We’ll take whatever is working and connect them all. After connecting to the bank platform, then the functionality comes alive.

Sramana Mitra: Talk to me about the FinTech integrations. Is the credit side also integrated?

Eytan Bensoussan: We don’t offer credit right now. For us, it’s a pure checking account. There are other credit card products out there where you can combine that information.

Sramana Mitra: Where are you seeing traction?

Eytan Bensoussan: The way I think about the market is, on the smallest end, you have hobbyists. They’re doing something to complement a full-time job. Then you have freelancers and small businesses. Then mid-market banking, corporate banking, and startup banking. We focus on the smaller side of small businesses.

The folks we resonate with are small businesses of about 1 to 10 employees. That’s where we start lighting up. They’re digital, but they’re not tech businesses. They see banking as a tool to let them run their business. The more seamlessly built the tool is, the better. Some of our most interesting markets are places like Texas, Illinois, Georgia, and Colorado. They’re businesses that are working on traditional industries – local retail, long-haul trucking, construction, and field services.

The common thread is someone who’s looked at their existing bank account and said, “There has got to be a better way to do this. I can’t go to the branch three times a week to validate my identity to send a wire.” We have a customer. She sends 20 wires a month. She lives in a small town. They know everybody in the family. Every time she needs to send, someone is asking her to come to the branch to show an ID.

Our goal is to say that that doesn’t have to happen anymore. That part of the small business market is where we have the most traction.

Sramana Mitra: How do you acquire customers??

Eytan Bensoussan: It’s a self-serve digital process. We don’t have a sales team. We don’t have field outreach. What we’re good at is making an elegant and laser-focused onboarding process. It takes four to five minutes to have a bank account in your name. It should feel as seamless as starting an Instagram account. If we know something about you, you don’t need to give it to us. Because we’re working in a completely digital space, the feedback loops need to be very short. It’s a completely integrated digital experience for us.

Sramana Mitra: The question I asked is how are people finding you.

Eytan Bensoussan: A lot of incumbent banks put a lot of money on awareness. We don’t have those resources. We have a laser-focused growth team. They are looking across a number of different channels whether they’re social or search. Where we find interest, we then are able to show value propositions of NorthOne. We do a good job of looking for intent wherever it is. We then quickly get the NorthOne name in front of them.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: NorthOne CEO Eytan Bensoussan
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