Relationship Banking in a Multi-Banked World

Jan 19

In commercial banking, relationships rarely break in a dramatic moment. They break slowly. A client starts waiting longer for answers. Updates get vague. Routine requests take too many steps. Over time, the client stops escalating and starts rerouting, shifting pieces of the relationship elsewhere without making a big announcement.

Most banks don’t notice it right away. They often discover the shift only after the most profitable parts of the relationship, operating deposits, FX flows, treasury services, have already moved. By then, the relationship hasn’t ended, but it has changed. The client has tested another option and proved to themselves they don’t need to wait.

Coalition Greenwich data shows that 40% of mid-market clients are now multi-banked. This turns silent reallocation from a story into a structural risk, one that weakens the relationship long before a lender ever gets replaced.

Silent reallocation

Multi-banking gives clients leverage. It also gives them options they can use without making a scene. And the parts of a relationship that move first are often the ones a bank doesn’t see immediately: deposits, FX, and treasury services. Those shifts don’t come with a payoff notice. They show up as a slow reallocation that weakens the relationship long before a credit facility ever comes into question.

Silent reallocation doesn’t just weaken the relationship. It quietly raises a bank’s cost of funds. By the time the credit facility is in question, the “sticky” balances that make the client profitable are already sitting at a competitor.

This is why the conversation about technology has to be judged by execution, not features. A bank can modernize its client-facing tools and still lose business quietly if internal workflows and handoffs slow everything down.

The RM time crunch

Relationship managers don’t lose clients because they stop caring. They lose time, and the time disappears in predictable places.

Every RM knows the document chase. A client asks a fair question about approval, status, or next steps, and the RM can’t answer cleanly without internal digging. The client waits while the bank sorts itself out. Even when everyone is working hard, the experience still feels disjointed.

In a competitive market, the best relationship managers don’t stay where they’re buried in paperwork. They stay where they have leverage to perform. For community banks, fixing internal process isn’t just an operations goal. It’s a talent retention strategy.

The “supercharged relationship manager” is not an RM who has been replaced by an algorithm. It is an RM who has been freed from the internal bureaucracy that prevents them from being proactive. Deloitte’s point is leverage: better visibility, fewer manual steps, and fewer dead ends between the client request and the bank response.

When RMs have that support, they spend less time chasing answers internally and more time doing what clients actually value: providing clarity, managing timelines, and keeping momentum moving.

Where tech earns its keep

Most “technology wins” in commercial banking don’t happen in a client portal. They happen in the background, where friction can either be removed or multiplied.

At a practical level, the improvements clients actually feel are things like:

fewer “status check” emails between departments
not asking the client for the same file twice
clearer ownership when something is pending

Preventable surprises break trust

IBM’s 2025 outlook emphasizes operational resilience, and in commercial banking, that maps directly to client trust.

A preventable surprise is rarely a small issue. It’s the compliance snag that appears late, the credit question that surfaces after the timeline is set, the RM learning about a problem at the same time the client does. Technology should help banks identify these issues earlier, so the RM has time to manage them before they damage confidence.

Because when an RM can’t see around corners, the client starts looking for a bank that can.

Loyalty isn’t convenience anymore

Accenture’s 2025 research reinforces what many banks are already seeing: digital expectations are now the baseline. Convenience doesn’t win loyalty by itself. Consistent service does.

That matters in mid-market commercial banking because clients don’t announce they’re leaving. They just start moving pieces. And if they’re already multi-banked, those moves can happen quickly.

Technology won’t replace the client relationship. But it will decide whether relationship banking can keep up.

Sources

Deloitte. Supercharged banking client services and relationship management.
https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/Industries/financial-services/articles/supercharged-banking-client-services-relationship-management.html

Accenture. Global Banking Consumer Study 2025 Report.
https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/industry/banking/document/Accenture-Global-Banking-Consumer-Study-2025-Report.pdf

Coalition Greenwich. Top trends to watch in U.S. commercial banking in 2025.
https://www.greenwich.com/commercial-banking/top-trends-watch-us-commercial-banking-2025

IBM Institute for Business Value. 2025 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets.
https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/2025-banking-financial-markets-outlook