Project BankNorth, a U.K.-based SME lender, has teamed up with nCino, and will leverage the fintech’s Bank Operating System to better serve the financing needs of small businesses when it goes live in 2020.
nCino International Managing Director Pullen Daniel praised BankNorth as an “up-and-coming challenger.” He said, “The BankNorth team is extremely experienced and well-regarded, and were able to identify a gap in the SME market upon which to build their unique offering.”
Customer experience was at the heart of BankNorth’s decision to partner with nCino. Founder and CEO Jonathan Thompson underscored the value of working with nCino at the early stages. “It’s critical we provide a smooth and intuitive interface for our customers and introducers in order to deliver a fantastic customer experience,” Thompson said. “Working with nCino early on in our development allows us to tailor our whole business around delivering an engaging and differentiated customer experience.”
BankNorth is backed by veterans of Atom Bank, HSBC, First Direct, Santander, and RBS, and represents a blend of both traditional and challenger banking worlds. At the beginning of the year, the company announced four new senior hires, including a chief technology officer. Backing BankNorth are GrowthFunders and G.Ventures, the trading arms of Growth Capital Ventures. The challenger has yet to secure a banking license.
nCino demonstrated its Bank Operating System at FinovateEurope 2017. The cloud-based technology combines customer onboarding, CRM, account opening, loan origination, workflow, credit analysis, ECM, and instant reporting, to help banks drive revenue and leverage analytics to better serve their customers.
Earlier this month, nCino announced that Swedish SME lender DBT Företagslån and Australian commercial property lender Thinktank are leveraging nCino’s Bank Operating System to automate workflows and enhance customer journeys. In February, the company and partner Accenture said they would broaden the scope of their alliance to reach FIs in the Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions.
Founded in 2012, nCino has raised $133.2 million in funding. The company includes Salesforce Ventures and Insight Venture Partners among its investors.