August 24, 2026

Why 70% of Financial Firms Are Losing Clients to Slow Onboarding

The Growing Crisis: Client Loss Due to Slow Onboarding

70% of financial institutions reported losing clients over the past year because onboarding ran too slowly — up from 67% in 2024 and 48% in 2023.

That's a straight three-year climb, not a one-off spike, and it's happening even as AI adoption in AML and KYC operations jumped from 42% to 82% of firms over the same period.

Client onboarding is becoming a measurable competitive risk in financial services.

Why Is This Getting Worse, Not Better, Despite AI Adoption?

The data points to a specific mismatch: firms are adopting AI tools faster than they're automating their actual onboarding workflows.

Only around a third of periodic KYC reviews are automated on average, which means a lot of AI investment is landing on top of processes that still rely on manual data entry and disconnected systems underneath.

Regional differences make this concrete:

• UK corporate banks: Onboarding times frequently exceed 6 weeks
• Singapore: Faster markets, but still experiencing client loss
• Global problem: Not isolated to one region

Where the Actual Friction Sits

Celent's 2025 Global Commercial Banking Onboarding Survey of 409 banking professionals found:

• 79% cite document collection as the #1 point of customer abandonment
• 65% cite KYC/KYB process as the #2 friction point
• 47% report fragmented, siloed data as a major barrier

Banks cited these as the primary obstacles to fixing speed — which lines up with a pattern seen across the industry: the same client information gets typed manually into several disconnected systems, and every one of those entry points is a place delay and error can creep in.

The "Three Systems, One Client" Problem

A typical client file starts life in three places:

1. Intake portal (client-facing form)
2. Case management system (internal review and compliance)
3. CRM (relationship management and follow-up)

That's the same name, address, and ID details — typed by hand — three separate times.

What's Actually Fixable Without a System Overhaul

Not every firm can rebuild its core banking platform this year.

What's more immediately addressable is the manual re-entry layer sitting on top of those systems — the repeated typing of the same client details into an intake form, a case file, and a CRM.

Tools built specifically for this, like AnyForm's reusable client profiles and CRM Connect (syncing with Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics, and others), target exactly that layer without touching the compliance decision-making underneath.

Quick Wins:

• ✓ Automate data entry (not decision-making)
• ✓ Connect CRM directly (one client record, everywhere)
• ✓ Eliminate re-typing across systems
• ✓ Keep compliance review where it belongs (with your team)

See where your onboarding process loses time. Add AnyForm to Chrome, free.

Sources

• Fenergo, "Global Financial Institutions Struggle with Rising Client Losses and Compliance Costs as AI Adoption Increases" (2025)
• nCino, "Transform Commercial Onboarding from Cost Center to Advantage," citing Celent's Global Commercial Banking Onboarding Survey 2025
• AnyForm product and CRM Connect pages, anyformfill.com (retrieved August 2026)