Community and regional banks face an impossible choice—speed up your onboarding to compete with big banks or maintain the personal relationships that define your competitive edge.
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.
Community and regional banks have built something remarkable: the ability to be a true financial partner across the entire lifecycle of your market's success stories. You're there when the entrepreneur opens their first small business account. You finance the equipment when they're ready to scale. You provide the working capital that gets them through growth spurts. You manage the wealth when success comes, and you're structuring the complex credit facilities when they become the major employer in town. This full-spectrum capability—delivered with personal attention at every stage—is your superpower.
As community banks and credit unions navigate a constantly evolving financial landscape, a few challenges become clear. From delivering modern member experiences to understanding the role of legacy systems in a digital world, it’s crucial that community banks and credit unions find solutions that best serve their borrowers.
In the dynamic world of financial services, Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands at the forefront of a revolution, unlocking unprecedented value for financial institutions. This technology, characterized by its ability to learn and adapt, is not merely an addition to the toolkit of the financial sector; it's a game-changer. By harnessing AI, financial institutions (FIs) are enhancing decision-making processes, optimizing operational efficiencies, and delivering highly personalized customer experiences.
Community banks and credit unions play a huge role in the communities they serve. Unlike their larger counterparts, these institutions provide loans in the neighborhoods where their customers live and work, positively impacting local businesses and communities.
Northwest Community Bank sought to enhance its mortgage experience and streamline its loan processes. After implementing nCino Mortgage in June 2022, the Bank has achieved an "amazingly" easy mortgage experience, increased customer engagement and faster loan closings with less effort from loan officers.
Community banks are facing challenges from larger banks and changing consumer preferences. nCino can help them address these challenges by providing a digital platform that streamlines operations and improves customer service.By providing essential banking services in small towns and rural communities, community banks play a crucial role in the operation of the U.S. financial system and overall economy. While every community bank is different, they all have at least one thing in common: the need to streamline and standardize current processes, increase efficiency and find innovative ways to better serve their customers and communities.
nCino’s Small Business Banking Solution was recently featured in Celent’s Solutionscape, a report compiled to provide guidance for banks and credit unions who are seeking a tech partner. One of the reasons nCino was featured is because our configurable and flexible Small Business Banking Solution enables financial institutions to leverage technology to overcome the challenges of serving small businesses and allows financial institutions to go to market more quickly.
