Sector Spotlight: Retail Account Opening

Sector Spotlight: Retail Account Opening

February 20, 2025

The account opening and onboarding process is crucial to a bank or credit union’s ability to convert prospects to customers. A well-designed process — from starting an application, to approval, signing up for digital banking, and beyond — can set the foundation for sticky, profitable relationships. The value of efficient customer acquisition and fear of application abandonment should nudge banks and credit unions to adopt modern account opening platforms that are digital-first and offer seamless handoffs between channels, straight-through approvals, and instantly onboard customers via digital banking to new accounts.

What’s going on in account opening

Trends in account opening have been to automate more back-office tasks while enforcing robust KYC, easing application completion, and getting new customers hooked. Platforms have adopted, for example, programmatic marketing, more sophisticated electronic ID verification, direct deposit switching, immediate funding, and better tools for bank employees. Legacy account opening systems handle basic tasks like collecting customer information and proof of identity documents but may have inconsistent experiences between channels, require manual approvals, fail to onboard customers as part of the account opening process, and prompt phone calls to the call center.

Account opening vendor snapshot

The retail account opening space is made up of a mix of solutions from core providers, digital banking providers, and independent platforms. There are few best of breed solutions, but many digital banking providers have acquired or developed their own. Banks’ and credit unions’ choices will depend on their business and functional requirements.

Here’s a snapshot of third-party account opening products and the companies that offer them. It does not include all account opening providers; we exclude core providers because they offer many of their own solutions and have preferred partners:

Access Digital: Access Softek offers a digital account opening product associated with its digital banking platform, and part of a broader product set of fraud management, investment, and customer service tools.
Alkami: Alkami, founded in 2009, offers a deposit account opening product alongside its digital banking platform and ancillary marketing and payment fraud prevention products.
Apiture: Apiture, founded in 2017, offers account opening and analytics products alongside a digital banking platform for consumer and business banking. It emphasizes customization via its developer tools.
Backbase: Deposit account opening is a small part of Backbase’s digital product set, which includes account opening and origination across retail and commercial banking, wealth, and private banking. It also sells middleware.
Bottomline: Bottomline offers a consumer account opening product as a very small part of its product line, set against its commercial digital banking platform and integrated payments, cash management, and treasury management.
Candescent (spun out of NCR Voyix): Once known as Terafina, which NCR acquired in 2021, Candescent’s account opening platform is part of a broader product suite that includes digital banking, bank operations, and ATM integration.
MANTL: MANTL, founded in 2016, offers deposit opening products for consumer and business banking and has moved into loan origination. It advertises account opening for mobile, desktop, call center, and branch.
MeridianLink: MeridianLink Opening is a deposit origination application and one of many offered by MeridianLink, whose business is mostly related to lending, with a loan origination system, reporting tools, loan collections tools, and consulting services.
Narmi Grow: Narmi, founded in 2016, is a digital banking provider that offers online and mobile banking, fraud management, and back-office software. Grow is its consumer and business account opening product.
nCino: nCino, developed within Live Oak Bank and spun out in 2011, offers consumer digital account opening as part of its cloud-based banking platform with applications that span verticals and front-, middle- and back-office use cases.
Newgen: NewGen offers enterprise business automation software to several industries, and within financial services, solutions for consumer and commercial banking that include account opening.
OneSpan: OneSpan offers e-signature, digital identity verification, and authentication products to several industries, including financial services. Its account opening product is a solution based on some of those technologies.
Q2 Gro: Gro Solutions, which was founded in 2015, was acquired by Q2 in 2018. It’s now marketed as Q2’s consumer deposit account opening product.

What to look for in account opening platforms

User Experience: Intuitive, mobile-optimized UI/UX that enables efficient account opening.
Channel handoffs: Pass data in real time between mobile, desktop, branch, and call center.
Straight-through risk analysis: Real-time KYC and deposit risk analysis, with little documentation. Automatic routing to manual review.
Account funding: Integrates funding source connection and transfer initiation from diverse funding sources. Real-time verification and funding may be available.
Direct deposit and card switching: Redirect direct deposit to new account and check where old cards are on file at merchants.
Automated messaging: Status checks and alerts related to account status with prompts to complete onboarding steps, personalized to the applicant.
Marketing and bundling: Present offers before, during, and after application and facilitate a quick account opening process for more than one product at a time.

CCG Catalyst’s Sector Spotlights highlight third-party solutions, products, and the companies that offer them. They provide a snapshot of the latest innovations, trends, and key players within the financial services industry.

Sector Spotlight: Retail Account Opening

Sector Spotlight: Retail Account Opening

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