‘Local’ bank rated Britain’s best for small businesses

Handelsbanken, the local relationship bank with a branch in Stockport, has been rated the top provider of current accounts in a Government-backed survey of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)*.

The Business Banking Insight (BBI) survey, which is run by the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce, asked 20,000 SMEs across the UK to rate their bank’s performance in twelve different areas, including: clear and transparent, understands your business, and treats you fairly. Handelsbanken came top, or joint top, in ten of these twelve categories.

Customers were then asked to provide an overall score for their bank, based on their willingness to recommend to other businesses. Handelsbanken was, for a second year, comfortably rated highest by its customers, across all three SME size categories (1-9, 10-49 and 50-249 employees).

David Kovacs, Branch Manager, Stockport commented:

“We pride ourselves on building strong and lasting relationships, focusing first and foremost on providing the best local advice and service we can every single day. It’s great to see that this commitment is reflected so positively by our corporate customers in this Government-initiated survey.”

*Providers with fewer than ten reviews have been excluded. View the full results of the Business Banking Insight survey 

Handelsbanken is the UK trading name of Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ), one of Sweden’s leading banks, with over 800 branches in more than 20 countries, and more than 12,000 employees.

Handelsbanken is rated Aa2 (Source: Moody’s, 5^th January 2017).