Empowering relationship managers: how commercial banks can improve service

Approximately 71% of business clients view a relationship manager (RM) as the key factor in choosing a bank and selecting a lending product. 

As digitization reshapes the industry, banks must empower their RMs with the tools needed to deliver an efficient and personalized experience, enabling them to drive profitability. With traditional service models becoming increasingly inefficient and costly, well-crafted digital RM workspaces eliminate friction and give relationship managers what they need to serve clients better and drive cross- and upsell.

Here’s how they enable commercial banks to improve service and boost profitability.

First, let’s examine what’s wrong with the current model. Commercial banks are still burdened by outdated, manual processes that make it difficult to serve clients effectively. Some key challenges include:

1. Fragmented systems

RMs often juggle dozens of different applications daily, leading to inefficiencies, slower response times, and frustrated clients. Critical client data is scattered across multiple systems, making it difficult to gain a full view of customer needs and engagement history.

2. High cost to serve

The traditional RM-led model is expensive, requiring extensive manual intervention, which reduces profitability. In US commercial banks RMs can dedicate up to 60% of their time to internally facing administrative work such as gathering data from multiple sources or managing routine administrative tasks, despite these activities having little impact on client satisfaction or revenue generation.

3. Limited personalization and industry knowledge

Many banks lack a centralized view of the customer, preventing RMs from delivering the tailored experiences clients expect. 

Corporate customers increasingly seek specialized advice, yet many RMs operate as generalists. This misalignment impacts client satisfaction, with only 26% of executives judging their bank’s specialized industry knowledge and insights to be “very good” or “excellent”, according to Deloitte. Additionally, only 10% of executives say they would switch banks if their RM moved to another company, highlighting weak relationship stickiness.

4. Rigid legacy infrastructure

Commercial banks still rely on outdated banking systems that are difficult to integrate with modern digital tools. 

Legacy infrastructure often lacks the flexibility to support real-time collaboration, requiring RMs to manually piece together information from multiple systems. This not only slows response times but also hinders their ability to provide timely and strategic advice to clients, ultimately impacting customer satisfaction and retention.

5. Lack of real-time insights

RMs often make decisions based on outdated or incomplete data, leading to missed opportunities for proactive engagement. Without real-time insights into cash flow trends, transaction history, and risk factors, banks struggle to offer timely and relevant financial advice to their clients.

A modern RM workspace not only streamlines daily workflows but also unlocks opportunities for cross and upsell  by enabling proactive, data-driven client engagement. Here’s how: 

1. Centralizing data for smarter decision-making

A unified RM workspace consolidates data into a single, intuitive dashboard, allowing RMs to instantly access real-time client insights from a single location. Instead of manually compiling reports to assess a client’s liquidity position, an RM can pull up a detailed financial snapshot in seconds and proactively recommend cash management strategies. Given that 73% of commercial banking executives cite liquidity management as one of the most important pain points, the ability to provide instant, data-driven recommendations is a game changer.

2. Real-time insights for proactive engagement

RMs still often operate with outdated or incomplete information; by the time an RM reviews a client’s financials, key opportunities may have already passed. A digital solution addresses this by integrating real-time data feeds, giving RMs instant visibility into liquidity fluctuations, transaction anomalies, and market trends. 

Consider an RM managing a manufacturing client whose supplier payments have suddenly slowed. In a legacy system, this red flag might go unnoticed until the client reports financial distress. But with an AI-powered, real-time dashboard, the RM is immediately alerted to cash flow strain and can intervene early, offering trade finance solutions to smooth operations. This ability to predict and act in the moment strengthens the RM’s role as a trusted partner rather than just a service provider.

3. Automating routine tasks to reduce cost-to-serve

By integrating AI agents, guided workflows and automation, RM workspaces eliminate inefficiencies. Digital onboarding, automated credit decisioning, and real-time compliance tracking reduce the need for back-and-forth interactions, allowing RMs to focus on advisory rather than administration. 

For example, an RM can trigger automated workflows for loan processing, streamlining approvals and notifications, while clients remain informed in real time. Automation significantly reduces servicing costs and helps RMs dedicate more time to building stronger client relationships and driving higher productivity.

4. Strengthening compliance while enhancing customer experience

A modern digital solution embeds AI-powered compliance tools, fraud detection mechanisms, and automated KYB workflows. The result? Instead of navigating multiple systems, RMs receive real-time compliance alerts within their workspace, ensuring that all client interactions remain secure and regulatory-compliant. 

Digital audit trails, instant sanction screenings, and automated fraud detection help banks mitigate risk while reducing the compliance burden on RMs. This shift not only streamlines banking operations but also improves the client experience — eliminating friction and ensuring faster, more streamlined service delivery.

RMs need more than just a patchwork of solutions; they require unified, intelligent workspaces that provide real-time, AI-powered insights and recommendations, enable personalized client engagement, and operational agility. Investing in these solutions today positions banks for long term growth and ensures their role as their clients’ long term financial partners.

Learn more about Backbase’s commercial banking solutions.