Better context, stronger growth: How banks can accelerate growth by engaging the right customers at the right time

Growth remains firmly at the top of the agenda for many banks. Often the instinctive strategy is that more opportunities will drive better outcomes: more leads, more activity, more pipeline.

However, the findings from Moody’s 2026 banking research suggest a more effective path forward. Growth is often less about volume of opportunities and more about how successfully banks can engage the right customers at the right time with the right context to act.

Our research found that almost nine in 10 banks (89%) cite customer expectations as a major challenge. At the same time, new challengers, including fintechs and alternative lenders, are often able to provide a credit decision more quickly than a bank.

As one senior leader told us, 

The issue is therefore not a shortage of prospects but rather having the ability to identify and prioritize the right ones early enough to act.
 

Engaging earlier with the right context

Many of the most effective banks are shifting their focus upstream. Growth is increasingly shaped before a formal application begins, based on how well institutions understand customer fit, risk, and potential value at the earliest stages of engagement.

Our 2026 banking research highlights where many challenges remain. One-third of banks cite slow customer onboarding as a key issue, often driven by disconnected workflows and limited visibility across teams. Meanwhile, a staggering 80% of banks say they’re operating with fragmented data and legacy infrastructure.

In practice, these challenges show up early in the customer lifecycle:

• Limited early visibility into true borrower risk
• Slow, disjointed onboarding processes
• Know Your Customer (KYC) and compliance friction that delays momentum

These factors do more than create operational inefficiency; they can directly affect a bank’s ability to act with confidence at the right moment. When insight is incomplete or arrives too late, opportunities stall before they can be converted into growth.
 

Turning early insight into growth outcomes

Encouragingly, many banks are evolving their approach. Our research found that more than half of banks now embed risk insight earlier in origination and client selection, supporting better decisions from the outset.

This shift reflects a broader move toward earlier, more informed engagement. Rather than reacting to opportunities as they progress, leading banks are becoming more deliberate and proactive about which customers to prioritize and how quickly they can act.

Related reading: Embedding risk earlier in the lending lifecycle: How banks can move faster without compromising safety

Engaging the right customers requires a connected view that allows teams to assess potential quickly and consistently. When data, workflows, and risk insight are connected from the outset, banks are in a better position to move from reactive qualification to proactive selection of prospects. They can prescreen opportunities more effectively, engage with greater confidence, and reduce unnecessary friction across the journey.

One senior executive in our research summarized it clearly: 

Through this approach, many banks are connecting their prospecting and onboarding workflows to help maintain the uninterrupted flow of insight across the earliest stages of the customer lifecycle.

This means teams can see a more complete view of the borrower — including entity information, financial risk, and market context — supporting earlier prioritization and focused customer engagement.
 

How we help

Moody’s helps banks bring together entity intelligence, risk data, and economic insight into the earliest stages of customer engagement. This supports pre-screening and more informed risk prospecting as well as helping embed KYC and onboarding intelligence into customer lifecycle workflows.

This can help banks say “yes” faster to the right customer with greater confidence and less friction so they are better equipped to maintain the momentum from first interaction through onboarding, while also focusing effort on the opportunities most likely to convert and perform.

If you would like to explore how we can help you enhance early-stage engagement and build the right customer relationships for growth, contact us to continue the conversation.