What I’ve learned about relationships from 700 community financial institutions

Community financial institutions are routinely expected to operate like the largest banks, despite running leaner, closer to the ground, and with far fewer resources. Enterprise-scale operations and specialized teams standing by for every regulatory shift or consumer demand are not the reality for most community banks and credit unions. In fact, many leaders of these community financial institutions have that expectation for themselves which creates a significant pressure on themselves and their teams..I know this because we talk to these leaders every day. Across more than 700 community financial institutions, an engaged client advisory board, and our team’s many decades in the industry, a consistent picture has emerged of what CFIs actually need from the vendors around them. Three truths stand out.Relationships are not a service tier. They are the whole business.Community FIs engage with their customers in a relationship-centric manner. That’s the heart and soul of the majority of institutions across the country. Which means any vendor that wants to work with a CFI as a true partner must be wired the same way.When we recently rebranded as Navanta, bringing together UFS, BankOnIT, Safe Systems, and Quest Analytics under one name, the first question from many clients was not about pricing, roadmap, or service levels. It was: "Will I continue to work with the same people?" They were not concerned about the technology, data centers, software, or other components of our solutions. They were worried about Their People.That question is a compliment given the value our clients place on their relationships with our team, but it's also a very strong expectation and implied contract. It tells you everything about what CFIs value and what they expect us to protect and grow. The same instinct shows up in how their customers feel about them. Community banks continue to lean into their ability to build trust and strong personal relationships with customers. This is a differentiator that the nation's largest retail banks have been losing ground on in recent J.D. Power studies.Relationships are not an individual trait you hope to hire for. They are a cultural imperative. Attention, focus, thinking from the client's perspective, listening before solving. Growth metrics matter, but for CFIs success is also measured in how much stronger the community is because they are in it. A provider that doesn't understand the essence of the community banking vision is, at best, a transactional vendor. We strive to be a partner just as our clients will partner with local families, small businesses, farmers, real estate developers, and other local organizations.Simplification is the real deliverable.The second lesson CFIs consistently teach us is that their job is to make their customers' and members' financial lives more straightforward and manageable. A technology partner's job, then, is to do the same thing for the CFI.That sounds obvious until you look at the environment a typical institution is operating in. Regulatory burden now ranks at the top of community banker concerns alongside cost of funds, according to the Conference of State Bank Supervisors Annual Community Bank Survey, with cybersecurity cited as the single highest internal risk. A CEO or COO can spend their week buried in vendor contracts, examination prep, and incident alerts, or they can spend it on strategy, customers and building new relationships in their community. Those are not interchangeable.Strong partners close that gap. They unify what used to be four conversations into one. They anticipate questions before the examiner asks them. They remove the fear and uncertainty regarding the pace of change with technology so the banker can focus on banking.That's the standard, and it is a high one. If a vendor adds complexity, they are working against the CFI's own mission.Short-term response and long-term strategy must live in the same partnership.The third lesson is the hardest one to deliver on. CFIs must solve for two-time horizons at once: the immediate needs of the customer sitting across the desk today, and the long-term trajectory of the institution five or 10 years out. A trusted partner must be built for both.The pressure here is real and rising. For example, KPMG's 2025 Banking Survey: Technology found that 89 percent of banks name security and fraud prevention as a top investment priority in 2026 and McKinsey & Company reports that most financial firms underspend on cybersecurity. Short-term, that means being available when a phishing campaign hits on a Friday afternoon or a core banking issue surfaces on a Monday morning. Long-term, it means helping institutions think through AI, payments modernization, core modernization, and regulatory change, and being honest about tradeoffs.Operationally adept to handle the day-to-day. Strategically adept to shape the vision. And willing to speak up, because if a trusted advisor won't tell a client what they need to hear, what exactly are they being trusted with? Vendors who only show up in good times aren't partners, they're transactional suppliers.Why relationships matterNone of this is new thinking. The community banking and credit union movements were built on a relationship-first approach. What is new is how much harder the environment has become to navigate, and how tempting it is for vendors to respond by looking more like the big enterprise players their CFI clients were never trying to emulate in the first place.The CFIs we work with don't need a vendor that treats them like a smaller version of a big bank. They need a trusted advisor that treats them like what they are: the center of their local communities, carrying responsibilities that don't show up on a balance sheet. Our aim is simple. We treat our clients in an aligned manner with how they treat their customers – with the aspiration to be their most trusted partner and empowering them to thrive today and into the future.Eric Jones is president & CEO of Navanta, a technology and services partner serving more than 700 community financial institutions across the U.S. Learn more at navanta.com.