Saris Joins the Illinois Bankers Association as an Associate Member

Bankers I talk to don't want to run leaner - they want to run better. They want their best people spending time on the work that matters, not on the paperwork that fills a day. They want to grow without hiring their way through it. And, most importantly, they want to keep the kind of customer experience that made them different in the first place.

But somewhere between those goals and the actual day-to-day, most bank operations teams get stuck. Multiple people spend time reviewing the same documents, craning their necks back and forth between the LOS and the loan file while data is re-keyed across systems that don't talk to each other. As the bank grows and loan volumes rise, the manual work grows faster than the team can absorb it. 

Closing that gap is what Saris was built for. And today, I'm excited to share that we're doing it alongside a new partner: the Illinois Bankers Association has welcomed Saris as an Associate Member.

A century of serving Illinois banks

For more than a hundred years, the Illinois Bankers Association has helped banks across the state navigate change through advocacy, education, and trusted industry partnerships. The association has consistently focused on helping its members remain competitive while continuing to deliver exceptional service to their customers and communities.

That mission lines up closely with what we're building at Saris. When banks grow, the back office is often what breaks first. We help banks scale their operations so they can keep expanding without giving up the personal experience that makes them different in the first place.

The IBA does not put its name behind vendors lightly, and that is exactly why we are honored to be here.

What this actually looks like for a bank

Banks using Saris deploy intelligent back-office agents that handle the high-volume, repetitive work that buries lending and support teams: document indexing, document validation, data entry, and the stare-and-compare that keeps staff busy across the loan lifecycle. The agents are onboarded the same way a new hire would be, trained on the bank's specific workflows, policy guidelines, rate structures, and compliance requirements. Because Saris integrates directly into your LOS and core, no rip-and-replace of anything you've already built is required.

The results our current customers are seeing today:

• Up to 70% automation of manual lending-related tasks
• Up to 35% reduction in operational costs
• Processing times cut from hours to minutes

The goal is not to replace staff. In fact, just the opposite. We want your best people spending less time on repetitive administrative work and more time on the work they actually enjoy: talking with customers, making decisions that require judgment, and building the relationships that make community banking work.

What's ahead

Over the coming months, you'll see more of Saris across the IBA network. Our team will be at the Annual Conference in St. Louis, sharing educational resources with member institutions and working with individual banks to identify where we can deliver measurable operational improvements.

If you're at an IBA member bank and want to talk about how Saris could work for your operations, I'd love to have that conversation before the conference. Otherwise, come find me in St. Louis.

We're honored to partner with an organization that has spent generations backing Illinois banks. We are looking forward to the work ahead.