From Retail Banking Modernization to SME and Commercial Banking Growth

For many banks, retail modernization starts with familiar goals: simplify the estate, improve speed to market and reduce the drag of legacy technology. But one of the clearest tests of whether that modernization is truly working often appears beyond mass retail—in SME and commercial banking.

Small and medium-sized businesses expect banking that reflects the reality of how they operate: cash flow that changes week to week, borrowing needs that evolve with growth, multiple users and permissions, connected payments, faster decisions and service that feels tailored rather than standardized. Commercial segments put pressure on every part of the bank at once. Products must be more flexible. Journeys must be easier to configure. Data must be easier to access and use. Operating models must support nuance, not just scale.

That is why SME and commercial banking often expose the limits of legacy systems first. Product-centric architectures that were built for static account structures and siloed servicing can struggle when business customers need adaptable propositions, faster onboarding and experiences that span lending, deposits, treasury, payments and insight-led support. What begins as a core modernization agenda in retail can become a much bigger growth opportunity when banks apply it to business banking.

Retail banks can sometimes work around inflexible technology longer by simplifying propositions for high-volume customer segments. SME and commercial banking is less forgiving. Business customers require greater variation in pricing, risk treatment, servicing, user roles and product combinations. They also expect the bank to understand them as a business, not just as an account holder.

Legacy cores and tightly coupled architectures make that difficult. Launching or refining products can take too long. Data may sit across channels, books of business and product systems, limiting the bank’s ability to make timely decisions or deliver relevant experiences. Onboarding can become fragmented, with manual interventions that slow time to value for both customers and internal teams. Even relatively small changes to product terms, workflows or partner integrations can trigger disproportionate cost and complexity.

In this environment, banks are not just managing technical debt. They are missing opportunities to differentiate. When systems make it hard to create tailored propositions for SMEs, the bank risks defaulting to generic offers in a market that increasingly rewards relevance, speed and flexibility.

Publicis Sapient approaches core modernization as business transformation, not a technology swap. The goal is not simply to replace infrastructure. It is to help banks move from product-centric operations toward customer-centric propositions that are easier to design, launch and evolve.

That shift matters in business banking. A modern core and composable architecture can give banks the foundation to assemble products and capabilities around customer needs rather than around legacy system boundaries. Instead of forcing SME and commercial customers into rigid journeys, banks can build experiences that reflect different business sizes, sectors, growth stages and servicing requirements.

Modern platforms also make it easier to support the real-time data access that better journeys depend on. When data is more accessible, normalized and current, banks can improve decision-making across onboarding, servicing, personalization, risk and product development. That creates a stronger basis for differentiated experiences as well as operational efficiency.

Just as importantly, modernization supports speed. Publicis Sapient has helped banks build new business models and front-to-back platforms in compressed timeframes by bringing strategy, product, experience, engineering and data expertise together in agile multidisciplinary teams. That combination helps clients move beyond isolated channel improvements and create the technical and operating foundation for sustained innovation.

Composable banking is especially powerful for banks that want to grow SME and commercial segments without taking on unnecessary transformation risk. Rather than treating modernization as a single, all-or-nothing event, composable approaches allow institutions to assemble the components, systems and connectors they need for a given business objective.

For SME banking, that can mean modernizing around the capabilities that matter most first: onboarding, lending, deposits, payments, servicing, data or partner integration. It creates room for more pragmatic sequencing and faster value realization. It also supports coexistence—running legacy and modern environments in parallel while products, customer groups or lines of business are migrated in phases. That lowers disruption while giving the bank space to learn, adapt and build momentum.

This is where modernization becomes a growth story. Banks do not need to wait for a full enterprise transformation to begin creating better propositions for business customers. They can start with a focused segment, a product family, a geography or a greenfield offering, then expand from a stronger foundation.

Publicis Sapient works with leading core and platform partners to help banks create architectures that are built for adaptability.

With Thought Machine, Publicis Sapient helps banks deploy a cloud-native core banking platform in a scalable way, supporting faster innovation and more customer-centric experiences. This is valuable for institutions that need a robust core foundation capable of supporting new business models while meeting internal policy and regulatory demands. It also aligns with a coexistence-based path, enabling phased modernization rather than forcing a big-bang replacement.

With Mambu, Publicis Sapient helps banks integrate and deploy a SaaS cloud banking platform built around a composable approach. Independent components, systems and connectors can be assembled in configurations that fit business needs and end-user demand. For SME and commercial banking leaders, that flexibility can be critical when building propositions that need to evolve quickly, connect with broader ecosystems and respond to changing expectations.

With Tuum, Publicis Sapient supports banks looking for a modular platform that allows them to choose the transformation areas they want to focus on. That modularity can reduce both cost and development time while improving the bank’s ability to modernize safely. Tuum’s positioning around composable banking, data accessibility and AI integration is particularly relevant for financial institutions seeking to better serve SMEs through more connected and adaptive experiences.

The strategic advantage of a modern core is not that it looks cleaner on an architecture diagram. It is that it gives banks more freedom to create what business customers actually need.

For SME and commercial banking, that means the ability to launch products faster, configure journeys more intelligently, connect services more easily and use data more effectively. It means shifting from standardized product push toward propositions shaped around customer context. It means equipping teams to serve growth-stage businesses, specialist sectors and more complex relationships with greater precision.

Publicis Sapient brings together banking industry knowledge, customer-centric design, cloud modernization, engineering and delivery expertise to help banks make that shift with confidence. Whether the starting point is retail modernization, a greenfield proposition, a focused commercial line of business or a coexistence-based migration, the objective remains the same: create a more adaptive bank that can turn modernization into differentiation.

In SME and commercial banking, that differentiation matters. The banks that win will not be the ones that modernize for cleanup alone. They will be the ones that use modern core and composable architectures to build better propositions, stronger relationships and new avenues for growth.

Relevant Links

• Publicis Sapient and Thought Machine
• Publicis Sapient and Thought Machine
• Coexistence: The Practical Path to Core Banking Modernization
• Customer-Centric Core Modernization in APAC Banking
• Core modernization for mid-tier, challenger and specialist banks
• Modernisation du cœur bancaire en France : transformer plus vite, sans compromettre la conformité (Europe)
• Modernización del core bancario en América Latina: velocidad, coexistencia y experiencias centradas en el cliente (LATAM)
• FAQ (FAQ)
• 12 Things Buyers Should Know About Publicis Sapient’s Banking Transformation Work (LIST)