In 2026, investment banking faces a decisive moment. Industry momentum is being lost, with compound annual growth expected to fall from 6.5 percent between 2022 and 2024 to 5.4 percent in the years ahead. Shifting expectations, meanwhile, mean 85 percent of corporate clients are now considering engaging with a non-bank provider within the next 12 months, creating further pressure to transform and innovate at speed.¹

Insights from the Capgemini World Corporate and Investment Banking Report 2026 reveal the pain points pushing this pressure to the fore.

Yet only 20 percent of clients say they are satisfied with the services they receive from their bank, while fewer than one in four (23 percent) believe their bank is delivering the real-time, personalized experiences they are seeking.

The gap between what clients demand and what banks deliver is widening, and it all begins at the very first interaction: Client Onboarding. Capgemini’s interviews show that 70 percent of banking executives say client onboarding processes remain highly manual and fragmented, making them the second most inefficient workflow across the investment banking value chain. In a market where clients are already looking elsewhere, that first impression is no longer a back-office concern but a commercial imperative.

Promisingly, many organizations are already re-thinking how they build, connect and run their operations from the ground up, with onboarding no exception. Leading institutions are already proving what’s possible: Agentic AI-led operating models are impressively compressing onboarding timelines, replacing manual handoffs with parallel orchestrated workflows and providing clients with real-time visibility into a process that was previously opaque.

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The Process Bottleneck

 

70% of banking executives say client onboarding processes remain highly manual and fragmented, making them the second most inefficient workflow across the investment banking value chain.

By harnessing the latest in Agentic AI, digital tools and industry expertise, enterprises can re-imagine not only onboarding but also client experiences, with the former setting the tone for the entire relationship. As investment banks seek to modernize client onboarding, intelligent operations are enabling a shift from fragmented processes to connected, digital-first onboarding experiences.

In this article, we explore what this looks like in practice and uncover how a new era of intelligent operations can transform client onboarding from a friction-laden process into a connected, client-centric experience.

The Onboarding Experience Gap

Client onboarding in investment banking has always been complex. Regulatory requirements around Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), tax compliance and sanctions screening demand rigorous verification before a relationship can formally begin. As a result, KYC automation and AML and sanctions screening automation are becoming increasingly important priorities for banks seeking to improve onboarding efficiency without compromising compliance.

However, complexity alone is not the problem. Despite widespread transformation efforts, client onboarding remains largely manual and fragmented, creating persistent inefficiencies, and the client experience reflects this operational reality.

These are issues that point to an onboarding experience disconnected from the digital, integrated services clients encounter elsewhere in their financial lives.

So what’s driving this disconnect? In most investment banks, onboarding sits at the intersection of multiple functions — compliance, operations, legal, credit and the front office — each with its own systems, data requirements and approval workflows. Documents are requested multiple times, and progress is often opaque to the client, leaving them waiting without visibility into where the process stands or what is needed next. The result is a process that can stretch from weeks to months, eroding client confidence at the very moment firms are trying to build it.

At the same time, the infrastructure underpinning onboarding in many institutions was not designed for the connected, real-time experience that clients now expect.

And with 60 percent of clients feeling indifferent or dissatisfied with their bank’s digital interactions, incremental improvements to a fundamentally fragmented process will not close this gap, papering over cracks at best.

Transforming Onboarding Through Intelligent Operations

What’s required, then, is the creation of a fundamentally different operating model, one that treats onboarding as an orchestrated, end-to-end experience rather than a series of disconnected handoffs. The distinction matters because most client onboarding transformation programs to date have focused on automating individual steps, with the result a faster version of a broken process, rather than an enhanced one.

The transformative power of Agentic AI is enabling such next-generation operating models to be built and brokered at speed. The technology represents a step change because it allows onboarding to be managed by autonomous agents accountable for outcomes, not tasks. Leading platforms embed this logic at the heart of operating models, facilitating coordination, exception handling and continuous learning across the entire onboarding journey — and an end to partial transformation efforts.

Capgemini’s study reveals the cost of these partial approaches: 82 percent of banking executives report that their innovation initiatives have not delivered expected revenue gains, and 57 percent say they have failed to meet process accuracy or error reduction targets. Genuinely intelligent onboarding — defined less by the technology deployed and more by the Agentic AI-powered operating model it enables — can remedy this lack of impact.

For many institutions, the challenge is no longer whether to automate onboarding activities, but how to combine onboarding workflow automation, data integration and Agentic AI in banking to create intelligent onboarding operating models that orchestrate the entire client journey.

The Four Pillars of Intelligent Onboarding

At the heart of these next-generation operating models are four interconnected capabilities that enable onboarding to be managed as a coordinated, end-to-end experience rather than a series of discrete activities.

1. Agentic, End-to-End Workflows

Traditional onboarding runs in sequence: Identity and compliance checks first, then credit assessment, then legal documentation and finally product setup. Each step waits for the previous one to finish, and delays at one stage cascade through the entire process. Intelligent onboarding replaces this linear model with parallel, orchestrated workflows, coordinated by agentic orchestration layers that dynamically sequence tasks based on risk, complexity and data availability.

Checks that can run concurrently do, with AI agents managing handoffs, exceptions and escalations across functions. Low-risk, standardized cases flow straight through with minimal human intervention, while complex cases are routed to the right specialist with full context from the outset. Autonomous agents monitor progress end-to-end, resolving exceptions, re‑prioritizing work and escalating only when human judgment is required.

2. A Single, Unified Client Profile

One of the most persistent sources of onboarding friction is the repeated request for the same information. A client submits documents to one team, is asked for overlapping information by another and again by a third, often in different systems.

Intelligent onboarding is built on a unified client data layer, where information captured at any stage is immediately available across the system. The client provides information once, and agentic systems ensure it is re-used, contextualized and governed throughout the rest of the client lifecycle.

3. AI-powered Verification at Scale

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AI-powered Efficiency

 

AI-powered document processing and parallel task execution are cutting onboarding timelines by up to 40%.

Document verification, entity resolution and screening checks account for a significant share of onboarding time and effort, but AI and machine learning are dramatically compressing these steps. Advances in AI document verification for banking are enabling institutions to process onboarding requirements with greater speed, consistency and accuracy while reducing manual review effort.

The Capgemini study emphasizes that AI-powered document processing and parallel task execution are cutting onboarding timelines by up to 40 percent, while Agentic AI-powered systems are enabling firms to process up to three times as many cases per month.

Crucially, agentic systems manage verification as an outcome-driven loop, re-running checks, sourcing missing data and resolving dependencies autonomously rather than pausing the process.

4. Digital-first Experience

The final pillar involves transforming how clients interact with organizations from the outset, a response to the fact that 82 percent of corporate and financial institution clients now prefer to interact via digital channels.

These expectations can be met through real-time status tracking , proactive communication when additional information is needed and digital portals that allow clients to upload documents, view progress and engage with their onboarding team in a single place. These capabilities are becoming central to how banks improve client onboarding and deliver the seamless digital experiences that corporate clients increasingly expect.

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Digital-first Preference

 

82% of corporate and financial institution clients now prefer to interact via digital channels.

Partnering to Deliver Enhanced CX at Speed

The value of intelligent onboarding extends far beyond initial engagement. When onboarding is re-imagined as the first stage of a continuous client lifecycle rather than a standalone compliance event, it creates compounding benefits that form the basis of next-generation, enhanced CX.

From a client experience perspective, the tone set during onboarding shapes the relationship that follows. A smooth, transparent onboarding process signals operational competence and client-centricity. A slow, opaque one signals the opposite — and in a market where clients are already considering non-bank alternatives, that first impression carries significant weight.

Transforming onboarding, however, requires more than technology deployment. It demands process re-design, data architecture, expertise in compliance and regulatory requirements, and the ability to simultaneously manage change across multiple functions. This is not a challenge most banks can solve with internal resources alone, particularly when they must continue onboarding clients to existing standards while the transformation is underway.

The right partnership can provide instant access to a combination of operational scale, specialist talent, proven accelerators and Agentic AI enabled operating models that allow onboarding to be managed end-to-end around outcomes, not tasks. In short, it means entering an era of intelligent operations at speed.

By connecting what has historically been disconnected — compliance, operations, technology and client experience — intelligent, Agentic AI-powered onboarding delivers not only stronger relationships but also an operational foundation for this enterprise-wide transformation. As expectations continue to rise, the banks that differentiate on client experience and build this new era will be the ones to thrive in 2026 and beyond.

About the Author

Garry Harrison

Senior Vice President,
Banking and Financial Services

Garry is a business leader and board advisor at WNS, with 25+ years of experience across technology, AI, FinTech and financial services. He advises organizations and investors on AI-led transformation, financial crime innovation, commercial strategy and business growth.

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References

1. World Corporate and Investment Banking Report | Capgemini