Globally scalable, locally compliant, Joaquin de Valenzuela, Managing Director EMEA, nCino

By Vriti Gothi

Joaquin de Valenzuela, Managing Director EMEA, for nCino talks to IBS Intelligence about the challenges and opportunities in financial technology in Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Joaquin de Valenzuela was appointed MD EMEA by nCino in October 2024. Previously, he held the position of EVP, Chief Digital and Business Operations Officer at Temenos, and prior to that served as the Head of Financial Services in EMEA and LATAM for Salesforce. nCino is a global financial technology company headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina. It offers cloud-based, intelligent banking software through the nCino Platform. Our interview began with IBS Intelligence asking de Valenzuela what key takeaways he has from his first year in office?

“nCino has always had an amazing reputation in the banking industry, but it has been a surprise to see firsthand the power of the intelligent nCino banking platform and the level of innovation it’s bringing. It doesn’t matter if you meet a customer in the UK or in Spain—the value is immense, as it’s really helping banks transform their business and the way they engage with their customers.

“It has also been great to see how quickly nCino has become an AI-powered company. We have embedded AI deeply in our platform, and banks leveraging nCino are already seeing productivity enhancements. Think about this: bankers using nCino are saving 8-10 hours every week thanks to our AI tools and process automation. That’s significant, as it gives them more time to grow the business and serve their customers. However, becoming an AI-powered company is not just about our platform—we have adopted AI in every area of the organisation, changing the way we build products and deliver solutions. There is no team at nCino that isn’t using prompts and AI tools every day, and we are leading the industry in this transformation.

“But perhaps the biggest takeaway is nCino’s role globally. Banks around the world are originating loans worth more than $3 trillion using our platform, and that makes me feel proud of nCino and our contribution to society—creating a world where intelligent banking fuels dreams, builds communities, and drives prosperity.”

What are the benefits to nCino and to itsncustomers of offering cloud-based solutions?

“The nCino Platform is a cloud-based, intelligent banking platform serving over 2,700 customers globally. With over a decade of experience taking customers to the cloud and partnering with them in their digital transformations, nCino is the leading solution built on and powered by data from day one. For our customers, cloud-native architecture means instant access to new features, automatic compliance updates, and the ability to scale operations without infrastructure constraints. They can focus resources on serving customers rather than managing technology. For nCino, our cloud foundation enables us to continuously innovate and deploy improvements across our entire customer base simultaneously, creating a virtuous cycle where every enhancement benefits the entire community.”

You are responsible for EMEA – how do customer priorities differ between these regions?

“Financial institutions’ needs vary from institution to institution and across regions and environments. While individual needs vary, the core challenges that all institutions face remain relatively the same: How do I delight my customer and deliver the best customer experience, how can I be more efficient and reduce the time to cash, how can I automate the processes and achieve STP leveraging AI, how I can differentiate from my competitors?  European institutions tend to prioritise efficiency, STP and regulatory compliance more heavily, while Middle Eastern banks focus intensely on rapid growth and market expansion. African institutions are driving financial inclusion through innovative digital channels. What’s consistent across EMEA financial institutions is the demand for a single platform that can help them manage the client credit lifecycle from prospecting, onboarding, and loan origination to portfolio management, reporting and regulatory compliance.”

What benefits does nCino derive from building up its partner ecosystem?

“nCino is a fast-growing company, and we are continuously expanding our footprint across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Our partner ecosystem plays a crucial role in this expansion, as they multiply our capacity to penetrate new markets and engage with many more institutions.

“Our System Integrators leverage our AI-powered Cloud Banking Platform and configure it to meet the specific needs of financial institutions across SME, Commercial, and Corporate Banking, taking into account local policies and regulatory frameworks. One of the key strengths of our platform is that configuration typically represents a large portion of the implementation, and the platform is flexible and mature enough that our partners can create massive differentiation and competitive advantage in the market, using nCino as the transformation accelerator.”

What do you see as the key trends in BankTech now and for the future? How will those trends inform what nCino itself will be doing?

“We’re witnessing hyper-personalisation, open banking, and embedded finance, but AI represents the biggest trend reshaping our industry. The moment for AI is not in the future—it is now. We are experiencing a fundamental shift in banking, comparable to the advent of cloud technology.

“Generic AI solutions promise efficiency but often deliver commoditisation to the banking industry. We see some financial institutions adopting ‘better’ processes that ultimately make them identical to their competitors.

“Our foundation creates a baseline of predictive accuracy that no single institution can achieve on its own, built on three main competitive advantages:

• Largest Banking Dataset: With 14 years of experience serving global customers, we have the richest data set in FinTech
• Operations Data Value: We learn from workflows, decisions, and exceptions that define true banking
• Unified Data Model: Clean, normalised data across all lines of business expertise

“In essence, we’re solving a critical paradox: Our Collective Intelligence Layer provides the industry’s most powerful baseline models for the banking industry. This eliminates 90% of the undifferentiated heavy lifting. We are leading a risk-managed revolution, built for your unique strategy, and we’re doing it in three phases:

• Phase One has supercharged banks’ staff by providing immediate value through customised intelligence. We’ve created targeted predictive and generative AI tools, configured to each bank’s specific policies and data.
• Phase Two, taking place right now, is supercharging banks’ strategy through Agentic AI solutions—intelligent agents that orchestrate custom tools to handle complete workflows through
natural conversations.
• Phase Three is about the future: supercharging banks’ DNA.

Leveraging the nCino AI-native platform, we’re building autonomous systems that execute your unique strategy at scale. This is the AI-powered version of your bank.”

How do you see your products evolving?

“We’re continuing to build integrated AI and API infrastructure to evolve with modern banking needs. The focus is on making intelligence ubiquitous across every banking process—from loan origination to relationship management to regulatory reporting. Our platform evolution centres on three pillars: deeper AI integration that provides predictive insights and automated decision-making, expanded API capabilities that enable seamless ecosystem connectivity, and enhanced analytics that turn operational data into competitive intelligence.”

What do you believe to be the biggest challenge(s) facing BankTech providers?

“The biggest challenge is balancing innovation speed with banking’s inherent need for stability and security. Banks can’t afford downtime or data breaches, yet they need to innovate rapidly to stay competitive. Legacy providers often can’t deliver both, forcing banks to choose between security and innovation. Additionally, the regulatory complexity across different markets means solutions must be both globally scalable and locally compliant. The winners will be providers who can deliver continuous innovation through cloud-native platforms while maintaining the trust and reliability that banking demands. It’s not enough to be fast or secure—you must be both, consistently, at scale.”