How to Sell to a Bank COO: Operations, Resilience and the Business Case

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What a bank COO owns, the operating measures they are judged on, operational resilience rules, what they ask a vendor, and how to open the conversation.

By Moe Alhosni · Published 2 November 2026 · 6 min read

Short answer: A bank COO is often the best business sponsor a vendor can have. They own how the bank runs: processes, service levels, cost to serve and operational resilience. If your product removes manual work, cuts errors or makes a service more resilient, the COO's organisation is where the problem lives. Open with one process and one measure, show you understand resilience rules, and expect the COO to bring in risk, security and procurement.

This page is one of five on the people in a bank's buying committee. The main guide is lead generation for selling to banks and credit unions, and the bank buying committee map shows all ten roles on one page.

I spent 4 years and 7 months at Moody's in London (October 2019 to April 2024), most recently as Assistant Director, Sales, working with central banks, financial institutions and asset managers. What follows is the general version, built from published regulatory guidance and how bank buying committees usually work. No former employer's data or method, and no client named. Where I make a claim about the rules, I link the rule. None of this is legal advice.

What a bank COO owns

The chief operating officer, or head of operations, runs the machinery behind the bank's products. In a large bank there may be a group COO and divisional COOs; in a small bank one person covers it. Typically they own:

Operations teams. Payments processing, account opening, lending operations, reconciliations, customer servicing back offices.
Change and transformation. Many banks run major change programmes under the COO.
Service levels. How fast and how accurately things get done.
Operational resilience. Keeping important services running, and recovering when they do not.
Often, third-party management. In some banks, vendor management reports into the COO.

The measures a COO is judged on

Measure	What it means	How a vendor can move it
Cost to serve	What it costs to run a process or serve a customer	Automation, fewer manual touches
Straight-through processing rate	Share of items processed with no manual step	Better data, better rules, fewer exceptions
Error and rework rates	How often things have to be fixed	Validation, better tooling
Service level performance	Turnaround times against targets	Faster processing, better workflow
Incidents and recovery	How often services fail and how fast they recover	More resilient infrastructure, better monitoring

Operational resilience: the rules a COO lives with

Since the late 2010s, regulators have pushed banks to plan for disruption, not just prevent it.

In the UK, the FCA's operational resilience rules and the PRA's SS1/21 on impact tolerances for important business services require firms to identify important business services and stay within set limits of disruption. In-scope firms had until 31 March 2025 to meet those tolerances.
In the EU, DORA has applied since 17 January 2025 and includes ICT third-party risk.
In the US, the Interagency Guidance on Third-Party Relationships: Risk Management (Federal Reserve, FDIC and OCC, June 2023; also OCC Bulletin 2023-17) expects risk management across the whole life of a vendor relationship.

If your product supports an important business service, the COO will ask how you affect their impact tolerance. Have an answer.

What a COO asks a vendor

Which process, and what changes? Before and after, in their terms.
What does implementation take from my teams? Staff time is the COO's scarcest resource.
What happens when you fail? Your recovery times, your support model, your exit plan.
How does this fit our change portfolio? Large banks have more projects than capacity. Yours must earn a slot.
Who has run this at a similar bank? References, ideally from a similar size and type of institution.

How to open the conversation

Pick one process. "Manual exception handling in payment investigations" beats "operational efficiency".
Use a number you can defend. Time per case, error rate, cases per person. If you only have industry figures, say so.
Reach the right level. In a large bank, the head of a specific operations area is often a better first contact than the group COO. In a regional or community bank, the COO is the right first contact for most operations products.
Offer a contained pilot. COOs prefer a small, measurable trial on one process. See how a first bank pilot is usually structured.

What not to do

Do not underestimate implementation. A COO has seen many projects run late. Over-promising here is remembered.
Do not ignore resilience. "We run on a major cloud provider" is not an answer to "what happens when you fail?"
Do not pitch transformation in general. Pitch one measurable change.

Where the COO sits in the buying committee

The COO or a divisional head of operations is often the business sponsor: the person who owns the problem and the budget, and who brings in the CFO for the business case, the CISO and third-party risk for review, compliance, and procurement for the contract. Arm them for each of those conversations and you shorten the whole deal.

Frequently asked questions

Is the COO the right first contact at a bank?

For operations products, often yes, especially at regional and community banks. At large banks, the head of the specific operations area is usually a better first contact than the group COO.

What is operational resilience, and why does a bank COO care?

It is the ability to keep important services running through disruption and recover quickly. UK and EU rules require banks to plan for it, and vendors that support important services are part of that plan.

What does a bank COO want from a pilot?

One process, a clear before-and-after measure, limited demand on their teams, and a defined end date with a decision.

Before you sign with anyone

If you hire anyone to book meetings with banks, us included, get three things in writing first.

The qualification definition. The person's role in the bank's decision, a budget line or a route to one, a live problem, and the words "held, not booked".
No-show terms. A meeting that did not happen should not be charged.
What a zero-meeting month costs. On a retainer you pay anyway. On pay per meeting you should pay nothing, and the contract should say so.

Then put your deal size and close rate into the cost per meeting calculator for financial services and see what a bank meeting is worth to you before anyone quotes you a price. Our own terms are a one-off setup of $1,000–$3,000, then $200–$500 per qualified meeting that took place, or a flat $5,000 a month, with no minimum term. We have not run a campaign for a bank-facing client yet, and we say so up front.

If you sell to banks and want to talk through your committee map or your first sequence, book 30 minutes or email moe@roimaxi.com.

Moe Alhosni, founder, ROI Maximizer (M Ventures LTD, 4 Beau Street, Bath BA1 1QY).

About the author: Moe Alhosni, founder of ROI Maximizer. Before that he spent 4 years and 7 months at Moody's in London (October 2019 to April 2024), most recently as Assistant Director, Sales, working with banks, asset managers and private equity firms. He runs the campaigns behind the first-hand data on this site. LinkedIn

After Moody's he was Sales Director at Coinshift, a Web3 treasury management company (2024). Before Moody's he worked at BLOM Bank France in London on settlements and customer service, including AML/KYC record updates. Full career

Keep reading

How to Sell to a Bank CFO: What They Own, What They Ask, How to Open — What a bank CFO owns, the numbers they are judged on, the questions they ask a vendor, and how to open a conversation that survives their business-case review.
How to Sell to a Bank CISO: Security Reviews, Documents and First Contact — What a bank CISO owns, what their security review asks a vendor for, the rules behind it (NYDFS 500.11, DORA, PRA SS2/21), and how to get through it faster.
How to Sell to Bank Procurement: The Process, the Paperwork and the Timing — What a bank's procurement and vendor management teams own, the stages of third-party onboarding, the documents they ask for, and when to bring them in.

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ROI Maximizer is a trading name of M Ventures LTD, registered in England and Wales, company no. 15554493. Registered office: 4 Beau Street, Bath BA1 1QY, United Kingdom. moe@roimaxi.com