Best small business bank

June 4, 2007 7:48 AM

Best bank for a small business?

A friend is looking for a new bank after serious problems with National City. She runs a small business in Indianapolis, so banks with branches located there would be preferred. Thanks for any suggestions.

posted by Otis to work & money (3 comments total)

Find a bank that's also a small business. Those nation-spanning huge corporate banks will eat your friend up and spit her out. A little local bank might not have branches and ATM's everywhere, but they will certainly treat her better.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 3:26 PM on June 4, 2007

She has to look for certain characteristics that she wants. If she is looking for a lender, what buriednexttoyou is a considerable tip, but if she's looking for dependable service where she can deposit her earnings regularly and get even changes for her cash registers when she wants, she's gonna have to look for those characteristics. Somethings to consider just off the top of my head:
1) business hours
2) proximity to her business-if she can run to the bank quickly for needed singles, changes, simple things.
3) depending on the business, safety of the location of the business.
4) customer service in general-there are banks that are well known for customer service
5)she could even go ask what percentage of the branch customers are small businesses.
6) extra services they provide - 24 hour banking(usually not available for businesses, esp small businesses), are the account managers readily available on saturdays, if so, till when?
7)when the deposits are registered in their system(for most of the banks, the funds become available at mid-night, but it's good to know especially if she has bunch of checks clearing out beginning of the month and her deposit takes a while because of a holiday or something, it's good to know those things, and also various charges(penalties, etc).

National City should be a decent bank, but I think there's 5/3 in Indianapolis too. It's a huge bank, perhaps worth checking out. There's also US Bank which is humongous...they recently (less than 5 years ago) merged two banks (two brothers merged their banks). There should be plenty of banks...I am really not sure about small banks though.

Hopefully you found this helpful.
posted by icollectpurses at 3:46 PM on June 4, 2007

Thanks for the advice.
posted by Otis at 5:28 AM on June 5, 2007