# How Bourn is harnessing better data, faster checks, and automated workflows to reinvent the business overdraft with nCino _Published: 2026-09-28T00:00:00.000+01:00_ Bourn has built its Flexible Trade Account on an embedded data layer from nCino, combining nCino SmartBanker, Identity Solutions, and RESTful APIs. _London-based fintech Bourn is on a mission to reinvent the business overdraft by replacing a static, 300-year-old product with intelligent, flexible working capital that helps SMEs grow._ Bourn has built its Flexible Trade Account on a single, embedded data and compliance layer from nCino, seamlessly combining nCino [SmartBanker](https://www.ncino.com/solutions/smartbanker), [Identity Solutions](https://www.identitysolutions.ncino.com/), and our suite of RESTful APIs to deliver real-time, low-friction, compliant lending decisions at scale. ### Reinventing the 300-year-old overdraft The traditional business overdraft is no longer fit for how SMEs trade in the growth economy. Facilities are static, slow to arrange, offer little financial visibility, and are only reviewed once a year. For growing businesses, that means complexity and delay in accessing the working capital they need. Bourn fixes that. Its Flexible Trade Account combines a smart business account, a flexible funding line, and a secure payment facility, helping businesses turn unpaid invoices and revenue into working capital. It sits alongside an existing bank account rather than replacing it, giving banks and lenders a way to grow SME portfolios, reduce risk, and deliver capital quickly and at scale. Doing that well depends on having the right data at the moment a decision is made, as Nick Tracey, CEO at Bourn, explains: > “Our platform helps lenders make good decisions quickly, to give funding certainty to businesses. To make that possible, we need data that's accurate, current, and instantly available. That’s why we partnered with nCino.” ### A single, embedded data and compliance layer Rather than assembling a patchwork of data and compliance suppliers, Bourn utilises one integrated layer from nCino, called at the exact moment it’s needed across the lending journey: - **Real-time pre-qualification: **Screenevery opportunity before a lending decision, thanks to a complete picture of an SME’s health, structure, financial viability, and sector-related risks, ensuring effort is always directed to the right, high-potential businesses. - **Continuous monitoring: **Eliminate static annual reviews by continuously surfacing changes in circumstances and evolving risk indicators in real time, within the workflow. - **Embedded verification: **Runreal-time KYC, KYB, AML, and identity verification (IDV) checks, spanning corporate structures, directors, UBOs, financial vulnerability and mortality indicators, and daily monitoring, with a clear audit trail. - **API-driven automation: **Pullintelligence directly into Bourn’s platform, populating applications from over 60,000 verified sources with no self-declaration or re-keying, for reliable scalability as volume grows. The result is faster, better-informed decisions and defensible, embedded compliance. With a data-driven understanding from the outset, effort goes to the right opportunities and every conversation between SME and funder starts fully informed, cutting wasted acquisition cost and improving conversion. Due diligence is built into the workflow at onboarding and maintained through the life of the facility, rather than treated as a separate exercise, protecting Bourn’s partners while giving SMEs the experience they deserve. > “As a regulated payment service provider, we are the front line in the battle against global financial crime. Having checks embedded in our workflow provides the intelligence we need to make robust decisions, while exceeding customer expectations on speed and ease of onboarding,” says Nick Tracey. #### Why this matters Bourn’s ambition is to make working capital available to far more UK SMEs than the traditional overdraft ever reached, through the banks, alternative lenders, and accounting platforms its customers already use. Every one of those routes depends on a reliable data foundation, and as Bourn expands across lender partners and integrations, the data and compliance layer beneath the Flexible Trade Account scales with it. > “What we’ve valued most is that nCino has kept pace with us. Every time we’ve asked for more, whether deeper ownership data or wider monitoring, the answer has been quick and commercial,” says Nick Tracey. #### Want to learn more about how Bourn is reinventing the business overdraft? Read the full case study to discover the complete story behind the Bourn x nCino partnership, or [register for our upcoming EMEA Summit](https://info.ncino.com/EMEA-Summit-2026#form) where the two companies will share the Smart Solutions stage to talk through what a modern working capital proposition looks like for banks and lenders. --- [View sitemap](https://www.ncino.com/api/markdown/sitemap)