In today’s transaction-driven banking environment, providing an exceptional treasury management experience and service are key factors in creating value for customers. In order to optimize treasury’s value, financial institutions (FIs) must embrace automation in their sales and onboarding processes to reduce the amount of time between when a new treasury customer says “yes” to the first time a customer receives an account analysis statement.

Digital account opening is a top priority at many financial institutions, for good reasons. With loan-to-deposit ratios above or approaching 100%, banks and credit unions can’t afford to lose out on potential deposits due to ineffective or inefficient account opening processes. A “friction-free” process is essential to the digital account opening experience but achieving this goal may be harder than it looks for institutions jumping into the DAO waters.“Not long ago, most financial institutions basically had the same digital account acquisition capabilities. Not anymore. Leading institutions are pulling away. Banks and credit unions that don’t provide end-to-end digital account opening must upgrade quickly.”
– Cornerstone Advisors

In the past, the financial services industry was slow to change. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and consumers’ shifting preferences, however, financial institutions are rapidly adopting digital capabilities and other technologies to support quick, seamless and automated processes and better serve their customers. As the industry embraces change, emerging cognitive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing and machine learning are transitioning from a “nice-to-have” to established key business drivers.While banks begin to truly understand the importance of cognitive technologies, it’s imperative to understand how to fully leverage these technologies to see true business value. The time has come to transform the Agile Enterprise into the Intelligent Enterprise by fully harnessing the power of cognitive technologies to capture deeper customer insights, make informed, data-driven decisions, manage risk and increase efficiencies.

Before embarking on their digital transformation journey, WaFd Bank was a lean operation, providing few services but executing them well.

Before implementing nCino, Platinum Bank, a community bank based in the Midwest, was using paper-based processes that required manual tasks. Like many of their competitors, the Bank was looking for a cloud-based solution that would help it gain efficiency, increase transparency and offer its employees and clients a seamless digital experience.Platinum Bank went live on the nCino platform in just under six months, partnering with nCino on an accelerated delivery for incredibly fast implementation, despite additional challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. With new efficiencies and automations to transform commercial lending, the Bank is now able to spend more time in business development and serving existing clients, all while delivering faster credit decisions. Powered by nCino, Platinum Bank can also grow its business loan portfolio more effectively and competitively by identifying bottlenecks in its sales processes.

Vancity is Canada’s largest community credit union and is a values-based financial cooperative serving the needs of more than half a million member-owners through 60 branches in metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Victoria, Squamish and Alert Bay in British Columbia. Vancity offers a full range of financial products and services for individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations, including deposits, loans, investments, credit cards and foreign exchange.

There is a new acronym that has become the center of global conversation around ways to quantify corporate impact. That acronym is ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance, and it refers to a set of standards for company operations that investors use to screen potential investments.

Financial institutions are facing the challenge of balancing the increasing demands for faster, digital banking with the rising wave of financial regulations, including compliance requirements like CECL and fair lending laws. The key to achieving this balance lies in adopting a seamless digital experience, leveraging data with emerging technologies and maintaining strategic and proactive operations through a flexible platform, as demonstrated by the importance of quick compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic. As consumers increasingly desire faster banking, more convenient access to their accounts and quicker decisions on their loan requests, financial institutions are hamstrung by a rising wave of financial regulations.

As financial institutions look to expand in the competitive and complex financial environment, we are seeing a surge in mergers and acquisitions.