A decade ago, we started Narmi with a straightforward yet ambitious thesis: community financial institutions are the lifeblood of the American economy, and they deserve world-class technology to compete and win.
Last week, our entire company gathered for Narmi’s 10-Year Onsite, a milestone that was equal parts motivating, humbling and exciting. Sitting in a room filled with hundreds of the brightest minds in fintech, reflecting on where we started and where we are heading, one thing was incredibly clear: the momentum we built over the last ten years is just the foundation.
When we launched Narmi, we were most focused on consumer digital banking, but as the fintech landscape changed, we saw a massive opportunity to natively build a true Platform solution in the market. We expanding into commercial and business digital banking, account opening, FedNow, fraud and more. We wanted to build something that no one else had driven by actual integration advantages (not sloppy acquisitions or piecemeal partnerships). Recently, being able to deploy AI across the entire platform extremely quickly has further reaffirmed that moving into a Platform company was the right thing to do for our clients.
We also memorialized our three pillars of Service, Innovation, Integration (SII). It’s important we back this up with action to fulfill our goal of giving regional and community banks the technological infrastructure to rival the largest mega-banks in the country.
During our State of Narmi address, we looked at the real-time impact of this strategy:
One of the most interesting themes on display at this year’s onsite was our focus on Practical AI. In tech today, it is easy to get caught up in AI hype cycles. But at Narmi, we’re dedicated to evaluating technology through a simple lens: Does this solve a real, daily operational headache for our financial institutions?
During our deep-dive sessions - “What Our Financial Institutions Actually Need” and “What We’re Building: AI Edition” - we walked the team through the exact feedback loops that drive our product roadmap, deploying Practical AI that directly automates tedious workflows, reduces operational risk, and frees up bankers to focus on relationship-building.
The response from our financial institution base has been overwhelming, proving that when you build solutions rooted in empathy for the user's day-to-day reality, adoption naturally follows.
One of the highlights of the week was hosting a fireside chat with three investors who believed in our vision when Narmi was in its early stages: Alex Iskold (Founder of 2048 Ventures) alongside Tiffany Luck and Hunter Worland from New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
Challenging market cycles have forced fintech to grow up. In our conversation, moderated by our VP of People Heather Cassar, we explored what drew them in from the early days of pitching Narmi to how the macro landscape has shifted and why doubling down on our core differentiators matters now more than ever.
Tiffany’s message to our employees of “don’t think of this as your 11th year as a Company, instead think of this as your first year as a company with 10 years of proven infrastructure,” was one of the more powerful statements of the week.
Vision means nothing without execution, and nothing demonstrated our team's execution muscle quite like Narmi’s first companywide Hackathon.
Cross-functional teams from engineering, product, sales, customer success, and operations locked arms to build solutions aimed directly at streamlining our most critical internal and customer workflows. The energy in the room was contagious, and the results were incredible.
While we’re keeping the actual winning teams and their products a secret (for now), the categories we voted on were:
We capped off an intense, inspiring week with Narmi’s 10-Year Gala.
Software doesn't build itself. Strategic partnerships don't maintain themselves. At the end of the day, Narmi is defined by the extraordinary people who show up here every morning determined to build something great. Raising a glass to our team - the veterans who have been here for years and the new faces taking us into the future - was the perfect capstone to a decade of work. Special congratulations to Brett Willard (RVP of Growth) and Larisa Hendrick (Head of Delivery) - the winners of our first “Founders Award” - for being the kind of teammate that we built the Narmi Standard around.
Looking out at the next decade, the opportunity in front of Narmi has never been larger. The banking landscape needs agile, secure, and modern digital platform technology now more than ever.
To our team, our investors, and above all, our financial institution partners who trust us to power their digital futures: thank you for an unforgettable ten years and we can’t wait for the next ten!
