“Deal management systems are decisively shifting from the periphery to the centre of the corporate banking agenda.”

This Appledore Research note examines deal management in corporate banking: the end-to-end process by which banks win, structure, price and deliver multi-product client relationships. Long treated as a back-office coordination task, it is now drawing senior attention as corporate clients grow more demanding and AI moves from strategy decks into live banking workflows.

We assess why legacy approaches have proved so hard to fix, and argue that the answer lies as much in architecture as in process. We examine the forces pushing modernization up the agenda and set out three priorities for banks building or upgrading their capability.

We also give our view of how nine leading vendors are positioned, from core banking suites to specialist pricing and deal platforms, including where each falls short.

Written for corporate and commercial banking leaders, CIOs and transformation teams, the note offers a practical framework for weighing deal management investments and navigating a vendor market that is heading for consolidation.

Companies mentioned in this report include: Citi, Curinos, Finastra, FIS, Infosys Finacle, nCino, Oracle FLEXCUBE, Salesforce, SunTec, TCS BaNCS, Temenos, Zafin