The Expert View: The Future of Commercial Onboarding

For many financial institutions, onboarding remains a complex challenge, governed by multiple regulations and dependent on information that is often difficult to access or verify. At a recent House of Lords discussion hosted by nCino, industry leaders from across the banking sector explored how technology, data and people can work together to create faster more consistent and more trusted onboarding experiences.

 

Setting the tone for the evening, Sean Gregan, SVP EMEA at nCino, reminded guests of nCino’s origins. “Our systems were built by bankers, for bankers,” he said. “We’ve always developed our products by listening to customers, which is why we want to hear your challenges.”

 

Building on what works

Despite the pace of change, participants agreed on the importance of human relationships. Having a dedicated relationship manager, who understands a client’s business and can anticipate their needs, helps ensure a smooth onboarding process. Equally important are skilled teams who can navigate the process efficiently. In commercial banking, where clients may have complex ownership structures and multiple products, experience counts.

 

Technology is helping too. The volume of data now available to support know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) checks has increased dramatically in just a few years. Some institutions are designing modular, easily replaceable systems so that underperforming tools can be swapped quickly without rebuilding the entire process.

One participant described introducing an “onboarding quarterback” to oversee the journey from start to finish. “It’s expensive,” they said, “but for some customers it’s worthwhile.”

 

The drag of legacy systems

Progress is still hampered by technical debt. “Our onboarding process was too slow and too dependent on legacy tech,” said one attendee. “We’re having to rebuild it completely; then can we enable true digital onboarding.”

 

Mobile-first onboarding is on the horizon but remains difficult for complex clients such as non-resident customers or high-net-worth individuals. Often, the information required sits with senior executives who are hard to reach.

 

The resulting inefficiency frustrates everyone involved. One bank discovered that 75 per cent of the data it collected was duplicated, frequently because separate departments requested the same information. The credit team might already have a document that the fraud team asked the client to provide again.

 

This is as much an organisational issue as a technological one. “It’s nobody’s job to make sure a customer doesn’t get asked the same thing twice,” another participant observed. Some firms are responding by appointing customer experience specialists to oversee the entire process and ensure a single point of truth.

 

The data problem: old challenges, new ideas

Data was a recurrent topic. Clean, structured and accessible information remains essential of efficient onboarding, but as one participant said, “we’ve been saying that for years.” Data trapped in legacy systems cannot easily be shared with modern platforms, forcing institutions to re-collect information they already hold. Two potential solutions drew particular interest: perpetual KYC and shared utilities.

 

The idea behind perpetual KYC is to gather information once and keep it current through continuous updates rather than periodic reviews. But making it work in practice requires clarity about what triggers data renewal and ensuring staff understand why each piece of information is needed.

 

Others advocated for a shared KYC utility, so customers could provide their data once, allowing secure access to authorised institutions. Governments could play a role here, for example through Making Tax Digital, or third parties could build “data vaults” linked to accounting software. Start-ups are already exploring this territory.

 

Such platforms might even enable “pre-approval” for commercial products, like consumer credit card offers. But, as several attendees noted, the industry’s deep-rooted culture of self-verification is a hurdle. “Banks don’t really trust anyone but themselves,” one said. “That’s why we all check the same data.”

 

AI’s coming wave

Artificial intelligence (AI) dominated much of the conversation. Most agreed it could transform onboarding, but only with the right governance and clean data.

 

For now, many banks see agentic AI as too risky for production environments. Instead, they are testing models such as chatbots to guide customers through forms or answer routine queries. Large language models (LLMs) are proving useful for meeting summaries, retrieving documents and helping developers write code, but not yet for credit or risk decisions.

 

But some firms are experimenting safely. AI systems can extract key details from application forms, populating digital records for humans to verify. Predictive analytics can detect ledger anomalies days before they occur, with one AI layer checking the work of another.

 

Security remains a constraint: many IT departments still block external AI tools to avoid data leaks. But the long-term potential is clear: agentic AI could eventually underpin personalised product recommendations or even automate price-comparison services.

 

Regulatory uncertainty

Regulation adds another layer of complexity. Firms often find that different regulators, even within the same jurisdiction, interpret rules differently. “One regulator can praise you for handling something a certain way,” one participant noted, “and another can tell you that you shouldn’t have done it like that.” Such inconsistency slows innovation and complicates compliance planning.

 

Gregan closed the evening by returning to the theme of readiness. “AI is prevalent in everything we do,” he said. “Our role is to make you ready for what’s coming, and that’s why it’s baked into everything we build.”

The discussion made clear that the future of commercial onboarding will depend as much on organisational design and trust as on technology. Clean data, thoughtful governance and a shared commitment to efficiency will determine which banks can keep pace as the AI era arrives.

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Ready to turn commercial onboarding into a competitive advantage? Download this recent Celent report, commissioned by nCino based on insights from 400+ banking executives across North America, EMEA and APAC.

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