Commercial banks key personas

At the head of commercial banking operations are the Banking Relationship Managers, who serve as the primary point of contact for clients. Crucially, these professionals manage entire client relationships throughout their journey with the bank. Their daily activities include monitoring clients' funding cycles, overseeing all bank-client interactions, and identifying opportunities for new business development, all while nurturing their existing relationships.

What makes the Banking Relationship Manager role particularly challenging is the need to maintain exceptional client service quality while also juggling multiple responsibilities that stretch across the breadth of the commercial bank's offerings. Banking Relationship Managers must maintain a holistic view of client relationships across various products while constantly seeking ways to reduce their administrative burden related to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures, as well as compliance work. Their focus is always on maximizing revenue-generating activities, making them key decision-makers in client experience improvements. Relationship Manager roles include the Head of Banking and the Head of Lending, among other titles.

Between the client-facing front office and the operational back office lies the middle office, where Client-Facing Operations teams play a vital role in supporting day-to-day client service. These teams, led by Heads of Client Service, Customer Service, and Operations, provide essential support to relationship managers while maintaining direct insight into client challenges.

What makes the middle office particularly valuable is that it is uniquely positioned to be able to identify service gaps and automation needs. Their direct connection to front office relationship managers, combined with their operational oversight, makes them invaluable in pinpointing areas for service improvement and technological enhancement.

The back office, while not client facing, forms the backbone of commercial banking operations. These teams handle critical functions including trade settlements, payment services, funding operations, and risk and compliance management. Led by specialized Heads of Operations, Trade Settlements, Payment Operations, and Risk Management, these teams ensure the smooth functioning of core banking processes.

An important aspect of back-office operations is their control over automation and procedure improvement budgets. This makes them key stakeholders in decisions regarding technological upgrades and process enhancements.

It is in this area where our solutions have the biggest impact. Payment investigations, for example, is a highly complex and specialized process, that without a technological automation solution would consume unsustainable amounts of human resources to handle.

The banking ecosystem also includes several specialized roles that focus on specific aspects of the business. Wholesale Payments Relationship Managers, for example, concentrate on cash management and deposit products, while maintaining a sharp focus on customer service improvement across all channels and staying competitive in online payments. Related role titles include the Head of Payment and the Head of Transaction Banking.

Wholesale Payments Customer Service Representatives handle day-to-day client activities and manage non-automated bank transactions. Their technology needs often center around email NLP integration, integration of payment investigation platforms, and cross-channel client activity monitoring. Related role titles include Head of Payments Client Service.

The Credit Risk Management/Review team plays a crucial role in monitoring a bank's credit exposures, in order to minimize losses. They oversee lending origination, risk rating, and annual credit review processes. Notably, credit review processes in most commercial banks remain largely manual, which presents significant opportunities for automation. Related role titles include Head of Credit Risk Management and Credit Risk Officers.

Perhaps one of the most strategic groups in modern banking is the Change Management team, particularly the Internal Transformation Leaders. These well-connected professionals manage new bank initiatives and oversee technology projects while bridging the gap between business and IT objectives. Their control over project budgets and deep understanding of the bank's operations makes them valuable partners in implementing new solutions.

Building strong relationships with transformation teams is crucial to successful Pega implementations, as they often serve as the gatekeepers and champions of technological advancement within the organization.

Review the following graphic, which summarizes key commercial banking personas: