By Eduardo Hornero – Senior Vice President, Middle Market Lending, Popular Bank

When a food and beverage client needed working capital to keep up with growing demand, our digital tools, although helpful, were of less importance than our decade-long relationship and understanding of the South Florida market and their business cycles.

In my 30 years of experience in commercial middle market lending, I see this pattern repeat consistently: the depth of relationship with your banking partner remains the single most valued aspect, especially in today’s landscape of bank mergers and digital transformations.

Middle market companies—businesses with revenues from $10 Million to $500 Million—fill a crucial gap in our economy. According to NASDAQ, middle market companies account for 40% of Gross Domestic Product and employ about 40% of America’s workforce. They are larger and more complex than small business ventures, making them more resilient to macroeconomic fluctuations. At the same time, they are smaller than major corporations and often need specialized capital solutions and efficient access to funding. From manufacturing to warehousing, logistics, food and beverage, and hospitality—middle market companies operate in diverse industries that are critical to local, regional, national and global economies.

Invest in building trust and being a partner.

The needs of a middle-market client call for scalable financial solutions that accommodate the company’s growth and expansion. They look for loans that are larger than standard small business loans and that have less stringent requirements on how the capital should be used.

A lot of our clients look for tailored solutions that address multiple needs at once. For example, a warehousing and fulfillment client may need working capital as well as equipment leasing, and real estate solutions. A logistics client may be looking for treasury services, fraud prevention, trade finance options, and advisory services.

A banking partner that can look at each business holistically, focus on their needs and goals, understand the market dynamics and fluently navigate all available products can put together a compelling solution that will truly help propel the business forward.

Such a partnership is only possible with a relationship banking approach. Your ability to anticipate the needs of your client directly correlates to how well you understand their business cycles and capital needs. A trusted banking partner often becomes an advisor on business decisions, providing services across multiple divisions of the same company.

Leverage technology to deepen client relationships.

Digitalization of financial services is here to stay. For personal banking needs, many of us rely on mobile apps and other online conveniences to complete our daily financial transactions.

Although things are different in commercial lending, technology is still an important component of the desired experience, helping us communicate with clients better and providing easy access to financial data and services.

Technology is there in a less visible, more supportive function. It ensures the seamlessness of the application process, fraud controls, risk assessment and the speed of funding approval, to name a few. Some loans can be signed for and closed from certain remote locations.

At Popular Bank, we recently introduced a modernized end-to-end business loan application process that helps clients close on their loans and get them funded faster. This new approach leverages technology on the backend, while preserving human interaction that our middle-market customers value. This ‘best of both worlds’ approach results in enhanced customer experience.  

As we look ahead, successful middle market lending will continue to balance the value of trusted advisor relationships with technological enhancements. At Popular Bank, we’re investing in both—deepening our industry expertise while streamlining processes that free our relationship managers to spend more time understanding the unique challenges facing each client’s business.

A version of this article was previously published in the South Florida Business Journal.