Speed onboarding for business banking: filling the gap between innovation and go to market

Executive summary

• The business banking sector is under increasing pressure to deliver faster, digital-first onboarding experiences for SMEs and corporates.

• Despite heavy investment in innovation, many banks face a "speed-to-market gap", great ideas take too long to reach customers
• The onboarding process, often burdened by legacy systems, manual checks, and regulatory complexity, becomes a key bottleneck.
• Closing this gap requires the right technology and the right partner.

The urgency of speed onboarding in a competitive banking landscape

Every time a prospective account holder abandons the onboarding process, financial institutions lose more than just a lead, they lose future revenue and growth potential. 

According to the 2025 Business Banking CX Report, 1 in 4 businesses abandon the bank onboarding process. Often, that loss happens before onboarding even begins in earnest, making early-stage drop-offs a critical challenge to solve.

The same research reveals that 97% of businesses expect seamless, cross-channel engagement, yet only 44% strongly feel their bank understands their needs. 

To thrive in the decade ahead, financial institutions must treat onboarding with the same strategic importance as customer acquisition. That means investing in 360-degree visibility of customer data and adopting real-time, agile CX orchestration powered by AI insights, turning onboarding from a point of friction into a competitive advantage.

The gap between innovation and go-to-market

The business banking sector is under increasing pressure to deliver faster, digital-first onboarding experiences for SMEs and corporates. Despite heavy investment in innovation, many financial institutions struggle to have speed-to-market.

Innovation teams often develop modern digital concepts, but implementation slows due to:

• Fragmented legacy infrastructure
• Regulatory hurdles
• Lack of internal agility or development resources
• Complex integration with core systems

The onboarding process, often burdened by legacy systems, manual checks, and regulatory complexity, becomes a key bottleneck which results in long time-to-market cycles, inconsistent customer experiences, and missed opportunities in the SME segment.

Why speed matters in business banking

SMEs expect the same seamless digital experience as retail customers. Speed and simplicity in onboarding directly affect conversion rates, customer satisfaction, and retention.

The faster a financial institution can onboard a business, the sooner it can start deepening the relationship through lending, payments, and value-added services.

91% of businesses reported repeating information across multiple departments when they needed support and complained of too many touchpoints. Sometimes companies interact with 2–3 teams to resolve a single issue. Business banking customers expect resolution in a day but many institutions fail to provide that.

How ebankIT can help 

With ebankIT as the enabler, your financial institution will be able to accelerate its time-to-market while gaining a strategic partner with experience. ebankIT brings a blend of technology, expertise, and flexibility, supporting institutions from concept design to rollout. Together, we can close the gap between innovation and delivery, ensuring that customer-ready solutions reach the market faster and with greater impact.

1. Low-code agility

ebankIT Studio is a low-code platform that allows financial institutions to accelerate innovation cycles, quickly turning ideas into fully functional digital journeys without lengthy development. Business teams and IT can co-create onboarding experiences and deploy them faster.

2. Omnichannel consistency

Whether onboarding happens via web, mobile, or branch-assisted channels, ebankIT ensures a unified experience, eliminating friction and redundancy. The user can even start the process on mobile and finish on desktop or vice-versa.

Customer information is no longer scattered across systems but unified into a single, intelligent view. Financial institutions can finally understand who their customers are and how they interact across every channel and touchpoint.

3. Seamless Integration

The platform’s modular architecture connects easily with core banking systems, KYC providers, and CRM tools, reducing complexity and implementation time. ebankIT also has an extensive ecosystem of partners that adds value to your digital banking interface.

The scalable, modular platform empowers institutions to move confidently from pilot to full rollout. The result is an onboarding process that’s not only faster and safer but also future-ready to manage evolving as regulations, technologies, and customer expectations change.

4. Compliance and scalability

In the complex world of business banking, compliance is as critical as speed. ebankIT has built-in compliance frameworks and configurable workflows help banks meet regulatory requirements while scaling efficiently across markets.

A key strength of this approach lies in ebankIT’s regional layers, such as the Canadian layer, which comes pre-configured with local compliance frameworks and standards. This localized setup allows institutions operating in Canada to seamlessly meet the region’s strict financial regulations, privacy requirements, and data protection laws.

Similarly, other regional layers can be tailored to reflect the legal and regulatory contexts of different jurisdictions, enabling banks to operate globally while remaining locally compliant.

This built-in compliance architecture does more than simplify audits or reduce manual checks, it accelerates onboarding deployment. Banks can launch compliant onboarding journeys faster, adapt to new regulatory changes with minimal rework, and scale their operations across regions without duplicating development effort.

5. Agile customer experience orchestration

The ability to design, test, and refine onboarding experiences in real time based on behavioral data and performance analytics.

Instead of static, one-size-fits-all workflows, financial institutions can continuously optimize their onboarding journeys, reducing drop-offs, improving compliance accuracy, and accelerating time to activation. 

The onboarding journey becomes personalized and guided, reducing drop-offs and enhancing the first impression for business clients.

Ready to speed up your onboarding journey?

Curious to see how your bank can simplify and accelerate business onboarding?
Let’s talk! Our team at ebankIT is here to help you overcome your onboarding challenges and turn innovation into real customer value.

Our digital transformation specialist, Mariana Silva, can show you how ebankIT helps banks close the gap between innovation and go-to-market.

Every financial institution's onboarding journey is unique; and so are its challenges. We can help you identify the fastest path to a seamless digital experience. 

Mariana Silva, Digital Banking Advisor

Account holders want simplicity, speed, and smart insights. With ebankIT, financial institutions can move from being just a “money holder” to being a true financial partner.

Let's chat!  →