Case Study

Vancity: A new loan origination system

Vancity grows its commercial lending business with nCino Bank Operating System

Call for Change
When Tech Meets Human Ingenuity
A Valuable Difference
Meet the Team
Related Capabilities

Call for change

Digital transformation is top-of-mind for commercial banks and credit unions of all sizes. That’s because digital platforms promise to help them compete in a challenging environment. They can help banks reduce their reliance on legacy systems, which often can’t keep up with evolving market conditions, increasing regulatory requirements and rising customer expectations.

Canada’s largest community credit union, Vancity, recognized that it could better serve its more than 543,000 member-owners and their communities if it went digital. The credit union offers a full range of financial products and services, including deposits, loans, investments, credit cards and foreign exchange.

Wanting to grow its commercial lending business and replace a 15-year-old legacy system with a more agile solution, the credit union enlisted Accenture’s help. The aim was to take advantage of nCino’s cloud-based platform to deliver an improved, tailored experience that meets the evolving expectations of members and employees.

When tech meets human ingenuity

Alongside teams from Vancity and nCino, Accenture helped implement the nCino Bank Operating System. An end-to-end cloud-based solution, it manages the entire loan lifecycle including origination, renewals and modifications, as well as portfolio management activities including member reviews, spreads and covenant testing. This eliminates the need to combine various point solutions.

Despite the project coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, our team of commercial lending consultants and cloud technology experts partnered with Vancity to quickly shift the project delivery approach to support the remote constraints. This challenging time truly highlights the value of cloud-based platforms for their ease of use and continuity of services.

Collaboration and transparency were critical to the success of the project. Together, we defined high-level business requirements, the solution architecture and a roadmap based on the agile methodology, bringing Vancity’s digital vision to life.

"By adopting nCino for our commercial lending operations, we’ve embraced a cloud-based technology with regular updates and releases that will grow along with us and help us remain competitive and agile."

— Nez Aquino, Chief Risk Officer at Vancity

A valuable difference

In addition to launching two US dollar lending products, the latest iteration of Vancity’s new platform introduces end-to-end digital capabilities including a customer portal and eSignature functions.

These digital capabilities have allowed Vancity to reduce its use of paper and meet its members’ needs, especially at a time when many people are having to be physically distant. Instead of needing to print multiple pages of forms for a loan application, members can now review, exchange and sign documents digitally. This also means significantly less time spent driving or taking transit to meet in person for staff and members alike.

The platform can grow with the business, and because it’s flexible and configurable, the credit union can further customize its processes, automating tasks and streamlining workflows to give it a competitive edge and more agility to respond to future market disruptions.