How nCino Preserves Personal Touch in Automated Banking

According to recent research from Celent, conducted in partnership with nCino, commercial clients take 49 days to onboard and 7.7% walk away before completion. For community banks—who are 19% more likely to rely on manual processes than their larger competitors—the pressure to digitize feels especially overwhelming.

Here's what most banks get wrong: This isn't actually a choice at all. It's a false dilemma created by implementing the wrong type of automation. The real opportunity? Transform onboarding from a revenue-draining necessity into your competitive advantage while strengthening—not replacing—the relationships that matter most.

The Hidden Cost of the Automation Dilemma

Why Community Banks Are Stuck

Your institution built its reputation on knowing every business owner by name, understanding their unique challenges, and being there when they need you most. But that same personal touch now threatens your survival. While you're manually collecting documents and navigating fragmented systems, larger banks are onboarding clients in days, not weeks.

The numbers tell the story: research reveals 65% of banks cite IT budget constraints as their biggest barrier to transformation. Yet, you're spending an average of $14,700 per client onboarded. That’s money that could fund innovation but instead maintains the status quo.

Meanwhile, 70% of bankers identify document collection as their top frustration point, forcing relationship managers to spend time “bugging” the client for information instead of actually building relationships. Before investing in transformation, it's critical to evaluate your current commercial onboarding and account opening processes to identify your biggest opportunities for improvement.

What's Actually at Stake

The financial impact extends far beyond operational costs. Consider this: with an average abandonment rate of 7.7% and average onboarding costs of $14,600 per customer, a bank processing 1,000 applications annually wastes over $1 million on customers who never complete the process.

But the real cost? Time. Those 49 days to onboard delay revenue by nearly two months. For a bank earning $100 million in new sales annually, that's $300,000 in daily revenue sitting idle. Cut just one day from your onboarding process and you accelerate $300,000 in daily revenue recognition. Reduce onboarding by 10 days? That’s $3 million flowing to your bottom line faster—every single year.

Every day you wait to modernize is another day competitors capture market share. As Celent's research warns: "The window to get ahead of the pack is closing." This isn't about keeping pace anymore—it's about pushing ahead of your competitors.

Why One-Size-Fits-All Automation Fails Community Banks

Not all automation is created equal. In fact, choosing the wrong approach can destroy the very relationships that differentiate your bank.

The Problem with Point Solutions

Point solutions excel at eliminating human touchpoints with no-touch client journeys—which is only one piece of what community banks need. By only offering no-touch journeys, you eliminate relationship banking altogether. These solutions treat onboarding as a transaction to complete rather than a relationship to nurture.

Point solutions create even more problems. You might solve document collection with one tool and KYC verification with another, but now your clients navigate a maze of disconnected systems. The result? A 68% drop-off rate when clients encounter fragmented self-service portals. Your attempt to modernize actually drives customers away.

Even worse, these platforms require years of integration to related banking workflows. By the time you've manually pieced all the solutions together, you've spent millions and still don't have what you need.

What Your Community Bank Actually Needs

Technology should create more time for relationship building, not replace human connection completely. That means you need automation that eliminates administrative burden without removing banker involvement and meets the customer where they’re at—no touch, low touch, or high touch.

Think about it: Your clients don't want to feel like they have to deal with a chatbot when opening accounts for their growing business. They want efficiency without losing access to their trusted advisor. They want transparency without sacrificing the white-glove service that brought them to your bank in the first place.

The solution isn't less technology—it's better technology. Purpose-built for relationship banking, with automation where it matters.

How nCino Strengthens (Not Replaces) Relationship Banking

nCino takes a fundamentally different approach to automation—one that amplifies your relationship advantage rather than eliminating it.

Automation That Eliminates the Wrong Work

Instead of removing bankers from the process, nCino Commercial Onboarding removes the tasks that waste their expertise. Intelligent document collection automatically identifies what's needed, eliminating the guesswork and back-and-forth that frustrates both bankers and clients.

Real-time KYC and KYB verification through integrated partners like Alloy delivers 90% fraud detection accuracy while reducing manual reviews by 95%. Your team spends time analyzing risk and advising clients, not chasing down documentation.

Visual ownership mapping turns what typically takes hours—understanding complex entity structures—into minutes. Automated workflows with transparent status updates keep everyone informed without constant check-ins, freeing relationship managers to focus on strategic conversations.

Preserve the Right Touchpoints

Our collaborative workflows keep bankers engaged at strategic decision points where their expertise matters most. Rather than forcing clients through rigid self-service paths, banker-initiated requests enable white-glove service when needed. Your team can jump in to expedite urgent requests or guide clients through complex requirements.

The nCino Platform’s digital engagement journeys keep the banker relationship central while offering convenience. Clients can start applications online, continue conversations with their relationship manager, and track progress through a unified portal—all without losing the personal connection they value.

Built for Banking, Not Automation-Only

Unlike generic platforms, nCino comes with 15+ years of commercial banking expertise built in. Specific features purpose-built for your needs include:

• Single view of the customer – Centralize KYC/KYB across all entities and owners in one comprehensive view

• One onboarding workflow across product lines – Eliminate repetitive information gathering, data entry, and rekeying by onboarding once for deposits, lending, and other services to increase wallet share

• Visual ownership mapping – Instantly visualize all entities and owners in an intuitive tree structure with automatic ownership percentage calculations

• Embedded analytics and intelligence – Surface efficiency insights and recommendations at the point of decision

Our platform integrates with your existing systems and scales from $1 billion to $50 billion+ institutions without requiring massive customization or years of implementation.

The Results: Speed Without Sacrificing Service

The numbers speak for themselves. Banks using nCino Commercial Onboarding report transformational improvements that benefit both the institution and its clients:

• 200% conversion increase: More prospects choose your bank over competitors when onboarding is seamless

• 71% faster onboarding: Compress timelines from 49 days to just 14-21 days—competitive with the largest banks

• 94% faster processing: Reduce processing time from 200 minutes to just 8 minutes per case

• Revenue impact: 81% of banks report positive onboarding experiences boost both first-year and lifetime revenue

These aren't incremental improvements—they're game-changing results that redefine what's possible for community and regional banks. When you combine faster onboarding with strategic deposit growth strategies, you can scale business deposits while reducing onboarding time, creating a compounding effect on revenue growth.

Why Early Movers Win the Market

For the first time, 25% of banks are prioritizing commercial account opening in 2025—surpassing all other banking initiatives. Early adopters are setting new market expectations that will soon become table stakes. And with AI leveling the deposit playing field for community banks, enterprise-grade capabilities are even more accessible without enterprise-sized budgets.

Here's what makes this moment unique: The combination of relationship banking and enterprise automation remains rare. Digital banks and neobanks can't replicate the deep community connections you've built over decades. But if you wait too long to modernize, those relationships won't be enough to overcome the friction of outdated processes.

The banks that move now gain a sustainable competitive advantage—delivering the speed and convenience of big banks while strengthening the personal relationships that community banks do best. This isn't just about keeping up anymore. It's about leaping ahead while you still can.

See How It Works for Your Institution

Ready to transform onboarding from your biggest challenge into your strongest differentiator? Let's make it happen.

Schedule a demo to see how nCino preserves your relationship-first approach while eliminating the administrative burden that's holding you back. We'll show you the collaborative workflows that keep bankers engaged, the intelligent automation that accelerates decisions, and the white-glove client experience you can deliver at scale.

What if technology could level the deposit playing field? Read the blog to learn how community banks are beating big banks at their own game.

This analysis is based on Celent's Global Commercial Banking Onboarding Survey 2025, surveying 409 banking professionals across North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific, representing financial institutions ranging from $10 billion to $500 billion+ in assets.