Every year, one in five commercial banking relationships is in motion. Research from McKinsey in 2025 found that up to 20% of commercial clients switch their primary banking partner in any given year. That’s a pipeline if you’re growing, and an attrition risk if you’re not.
For financial institutions, the commercial banking opportunity is larger than most leadership teams recognize, and the urgency to act is greater than most realize. Here’s what the numbers say, and what it actually takes to compete.
The scale of the opportunity
Business-related payments account for more than $91 trillion in annual flow through the ACH Network, which equates to nearly the entire network’s total processed value of $93 trillion in 2025. B2B payments on that network grew almost 10% last year, reaching 8.1 billion transactions.
A single business account can generate the payment activity of dozens or sometimes hundreds of consumer accounts.
An institution built primarily for consumer flow is competing for a single-digit slice of a $90 trillion market. Every B2B payment that doesn’t touch your rails is a relationship someone else owns.
Where the real profitability lives
Commercial deposits represent roughly half of all U.S. deposits. For institutions managing funding costs and liquidity, this is the single biggest lever available. But the profitability story goes deeper than deposit volume.
McKinsey’s research found that financial institutions who own the entire primary banking relationship see an increase in return on equity of 20% versus those with lending-only relationships. The gap is that large because primary relationships produce lower-cost, stickier deposits. A business keeping operating cash with you isn’t rate-shopping the same way a transactional depositor would. Earnings credit accounts shift the conversation from “what rate can you offer?” to the fundamentally different and more durable dynamic of how do I maximize value across your services?” The fee income story is equally compelling. McKinsey found that fee income, generated predominantly through treasury management, is the primary factor separating top-performing commercial institutions from the rest, rather than loan volume or deposit size. Institutions applying analytics-driven capabilities to pricing, share of wallet, and attrition reduction can achieve 10 to 15 percent first-year revenue gains in treasury management, with much of it dropping directly to the bottom line.
That revenue shows up as ACH origination fees, wire fees (domestic and international), positive pay subscriptions, account analysis, and earnings credit. None are huge individually. But they’re recurring, they compound, and once a business is running cash management, payables, and receivables through your institution, they’re not leaving over a quarter point on a loan rate.
Accounts are transactional. Relationships are transformational.
The competitive pressure is already here
The urgency isn’t hypothetical. Some banks have set up greenfield commercial banking operations specifically to capture this space, attracted by the recurring fee-based revenue model. Fintech platforms are positioning themselves directly between businesses and their financial institution. Community and regional institutions that don’t offer comprehensive business banking risk losing the relationship entirely—not to another bank, but to a software platform.
This is the market you’re competing in. The question is whether your institution is set up to win.
What it actually takes: A playbook for getting started
Business and commercial banking is not a plug-and-play proposition. It requires the right people, policies, infrastructure, and institutional commitment before pursuing the opportunity in earnest. Here’s how to think about each dimension.
1. know your market before you move
The starting point is mapping the business landscape in your community. A NAICS study that analyzes the sectors, sizes, and needs of local businesses gives you your opportunity map. Understand which industries are present, how concentrated your exposure is, and where your institution can realistically compete. Business banking runs on referrals, and referrals run on reputation. Having a credible name in your market is a prerequisite, not a byproduct.
2. Managing support volumes
Support teams are absorbing rising volume from increasingly complex user needs, and the unstructured data sitting within in-app messages, calls, and audit logs holds most of the answers. The job for AI here is to turn that unstructured data into structured assistance for the support staff.
3. staff for the full relationship, not just the credit
Business banking requires bankers who own the complete commercial relationship rather than lenders who are credit-centric by default. A business user with five products is far less likely to leave than one with a checking account. Depth of relationship is your best retention strategy, which means your team needs to understand treasury, cash flow, and the full product suite, not just underwriting.
4. build policies and a risk framework built for business
Your retail compliance posture will not transfer. Business banking carries different fraud exposure, different ACH risk, and different regulatory requirements. One cautionary note from the field: institutions have faced serious compliance consequences when business clients used incorrect ACH SEC codes—not out of bad intent, but because no one built the training framework to prevent it. Getting the risk architecture right before scaling is essential.
5. demand operational excellence
A business client’s payroll run or ACH file is not a routine transaction. It represents their employees’ livelihoods, their vendor relationships, and their cash flow. The standard of urgency is categorically different from retail servicing. Institutions that build operations capable of meeting that standard and communicating it clearly to business clients earn a level of trust that consumer banking can’t replicate.
A case study in relationship depth
A dental practice is one of the most bankable business types in any community, and one of the most underserved by institutions that don’t know how to read the financials.
A typical dental practice carries $500K to $1M or more in equipment, financed over five to ten years through term loans and equipment financing with ACH origination for ongoing payments. Insurance reimbursements arrive 30 to 45 days after treatment, creating a cash conversion cycle gap that’s exactly where your banking relationship lives: ACH, line of credit, remote deposit capture. The high check volume for lab fees, supplies, and staff creates meaningful fraud exposure—an obvious use case for Positive Pay.
The full revenue picture for a well-activated practice relationship spans four streams: loan interest, net deposit value, treasury fees, and card revenue. A loan-only view misses three of them. And because the deposits are relationship-driven rather than rate-sensitive when properly activated, the full treasury suite of payroll, wires, ACH, and sweeps keeps operating funds sticky across rate cycles.
The right approach is to bundle appropriately at the start, monitor closely, build trust, and extend full capabilities as the relationship matures. The institutions that do this well don’t just win the dental practice; they become the practice’s financial partner for decades.
The real question isn’t whether your institution can serve businesses, but whether you’ll be the one that wins them over for a long-term relationship.
The platform behind the strategy
Lumin’s business banking capabilities are built for institutions ready to compete for the full commercial relationship. ACH origination, domestic and international wires, remote deposit, detailed user permissions, and accounting integrations are built in.
Lumin clients have grown commercial accounts by 23% and increased products per user relationship by 11%, proving that when you build the right foundation and execute the strategy with discipline, the compounding growth that business banking promises actually materializes.
The opportunity is real. The window is open. The institutions investing now will be the ones holding the relationships and the deposits five years from now.
Joe Schramka
Senior Product Manager, Lumin Digital
Brian Koenig
Senior Product Manager, Lumin Digital
