At an event in central London yesterday, I launched the new Business Banking Insight initiative, which is designed to support SMEs through create greater transparency by sharing the experiences of small businesses.

The BBI is essentially an SME-led insight, which first of all enables banks to look at themselves and areas they can improve on but also for challengers to see what they could do, where the gaps are and so on. It is a quarterly survey of a random group of SMEs that will rate them according to service, availability of funding, terms and conditions in all different categories.

It will be a wakeup call for banks themselves to start to improve services and target better products that small businesses want to see. There is a lack of competition in the banking sector and that desperately needs to change. It's the first survey of its kind to look at the performance of the British banking sector as seen by Britain's own businesses, people who own and run their own companies.

The site went live yesterday, and I would encourage all small businesses to take a look at how it might help them.