Rebuilding the Lost Relationship in SME Banking

By Michael Dowling, CEO & Co-Founder Narrative

There was a time when small businesses relied on the quiet power of a local banking relationship. A baker or shop owner could sit across from a bank manager who understood their street, their margins, and their worries. That relationship created loyalty and growth. When banking became centralised and cost-driven, that human layer disappeared.

Michael Dowling wants to bring it back.

Dowling’s inspiration comes from his childhood in the west of Ireland. His mother ran a small bakery, and like many business owners, “she knew cakes, but she didn't know money.” What kept the business on track was the local bank manager who spent time helping her understand her numbers and later financed an expansion. “That type of relationship finance is now gone,” he says.

Narrative, the company he founded, has developed an engagement and insight layer for banks that aims to recreate the value of those lost relationships. Today, SME banking is often little more than transaction lists and generic notifications. As Dowling puts it, “what you get at the moment is a list of transactions in an app, and occasionally you get push notifications that feel like spam.”

Narrative gathers data across open banking, accounting systems, POS terminals, and platforms like Shopify. It builds a dynamic profile of each business that evolves week by week, reflecting real financial behaviour. The goal is to offer guidance that feels relevant, personal, and actionable.

A central insight emerged from speaking to hundreds of small businesses. Business owners aren’t just looking to see if they’re doing well, they want to understand how their performance stacks up against similar businesses. Narrative’s model provides this level of granularity, recognising that even two stores on neighboring streets can experience very different results.

Traditional banks have been losing ground to fintechs, and that trend shows no signs of slowing. A recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group [1]found that 10% of SMEs in the UK, Belgium, and the Netherlands switched away from their primary bank over the past two years, citing high fees (51%), unfulfilled product needs (31%), and a lack of digital capabilities (29%) as their main reasons for switching.

SMEs are increasingly seeking a balance between personal and digital interactions. Just 20% of SMEs prefer human-only channels, 21% prefer fully digital, and 59% favor a hybrid approach.

Narrative helps banks meet these expectations by equipping them with tools to benchmark business performance, deliver actionable insights, and provide the mix of human and digital services that SMEs increasingly demand.

Narrative recently completed the ABN AMRO accelerator and is now working with banks and SME lenders across Europe. The company’s long-term vision goes beyond simple insights and better push notification. Their vision includes practical support for tasks such as grant applications, which are often complex and time-consuming for small business owners. Rather than simply flagging that a new funding scheme exists, the goal is to help businesses understand its relevance and, where possible, guide them through the application process.

More broadly, Narrative’s goal is to help SMEs to make sense of the constant flow of information they face every day: translating policy updates, budget changes, and even tariffs into clear insights about how these developments affect cash flow, margins, and day-to-day decision-making. By turning noise into actionable guidance, the platform aims to reduce administrative friction and allow business owners to focus on running and growing their businesses.

Fundamentally, Narrative is trying to restore something banking lost. A sense of partnership and community. The things that once kept small businesses loyal and helped them grow.

Technology cannot replace a dedicated bank manager, but it can revive the relationship model in a way that finally scales. If Narrative succeeds, SME banking may become more personal again, not because banks have returned to the past, but because the past has been rebuilt with modern tools.