Spotlight On: Nancy Schneier, Chief Revenue Officer & Founder, Vikar Technologies

October 2025 — In an interview with Invest:, Nancy Schneier, chief revenue officer and co-founder of Vikar Technologies, discussed her team’s shared fintech experience, the critical need for integrated automation platforms among community banks, and the challenges the company faces. “Success is about timing and finding your main mission and passion. It is about being in the right place at the right time with the right people,” Schneier added.

How would you describe what Vikar does to someone outside the financial services or technology sectors?

At its core, Vikar helps banks and credit unions use technology to simplify and improve how they serve their customers. We’ve built an automation platform that supports the full lifecycle of both loans and accounts. On the lending side, that includes everything from loan origination — automatically booking loans to the core system — to providing a secure portal where borrowers and lenders can collaborate and share documents. We also offer portfolio management tools to handle annual reviews and track key events after a loan is originated.

On the account opening side, we support both online and in-branch experiences. A customer can start opening an account at home on their phone or laptop, and for more complex accounts, they can walk into a branch and finish the process with a banker. Our platform ensures a seamless, omnichannel experience for both simple and complex needs.

What sets us apart is that both lending and account opening sit on the same underlying platform. This means a bank can manage both processes in one place, rather than relying on multiple disconnected systems.

While we focus heavily on the customer experience, we’re equally focused on the employee experience. If the tools aren’t easy for bankers to use, frustration shows through to the customer. By making the process simple for employees, we help them feel more confident and deliver better service to their clients.

How have ongoing changes in the economy impacted your organization, if at all?

Economic shifts have a direct impact on how our clients—banks and credit unions—operate, and that naturally influences us as well. For many institutions, the focus is on efficiency. They’re under pressure to streamline operations, improve margins, and position themselves for potential acquisition, since smaller banks often struggle to compete in today’s environment without scale.

On the other end of the spectrum, larger banks, like our client Valley Bank, are focused on continued growth. Even if they’re not actively acquiring right now, they’re always planning for the next opportunity. That dynamic — larger banks expanding while smaller ones consolidate — has reshaped the industry.

When we started, there were close to 7,000 community banks. Today, that number is closer to 4,500, and it continues to decline. That contraction reduces our total addressable market but also sharpens our value proposition: institutions need the right technology to remain competitive, whether they’re preparing to be acquired, looking to acquire, or defending their position against peers.

A recent trend we’ve also seen is banks viewing credit unions as stronger competitors than before, which is further driving demand for solutions that can help them operate more efficiently and deliver better customer experiences.

What are some of the main challenges Vikar is facing in today’s market?

One of our biggest early challenges was visibility. For a long time, nobody outside of New Jersey had heard of Vikar. We bootstrapped from day one, built a profitable business, and earned strong recurring revenue with a growing client base across New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. But breaking beyond our home market and making an impact on a larger scale — that was the real hurdle.

Another challenge is overcoming inertia within the industry. Bankers often recognize the value we bring and get excited about the possibilities, but hesitation to change can slow down decisions. Building momentum comes from showing the clear before-and-after impact of our platform, and that’s best achieved through proven client success and peer-to-peer recommendations.

The big shift for Vikar in 2024 was our decision to take on outside capital for the first time. After years of being fully bootstrapped and profitable, the four partners agreed it was the right moment to raise funding so we could scale. We closed our Series A on December 30, 2024, and have since put that capital to work in several areas. From a revenue standpoint, the most significant step was building out a dedicated sales team. We now have four talented professionals with diverse backgrounds and strengths, which has been a major catalyst for growth.

On the product side, our CFO has directed additional investment into our development team to accelerate innovation. A key focus is exploring how to responsibly incorporate artificial intelligence into our solutions. AI in banking is powerful but also complex, and we’re approaching it with the care it requires — balancing innovation with compliance and trust.

On the delivery side, we’ve expanded our team with more engagement leads, giving us the ability to scale implementations more effectively. This has already paid off as we’ve established a presence in new markets: with a representative in California, we closed a new banking client there, and with another in Texas, we’re on track to secure our first client in that region as well.

For community banks and credit unions, early adoption often drives momentum. Once we win that first client in a new geography, others tend to follow. That makes differentiation critical, and I believe we’re positioned to stand out.

The real challenge now is using this capital wisely — investing strategically, pacing our growth, and ensuring we scale sustainably while continuing to deliver meaningful results for our clients.

How do you consciously apply your mission to “connect people” to your company’s strategy and culture?

My personal entrepreneurial journey was less about a lone “eureka” moment and more about finding the right environment and team. I have always possessed an entrepreneurial spirit, but I was never the individual who would sit in a basement alone, inventing something from a single idea. I knew I thrived in an entrepreneurial environment and that I needed to work as part of a team to be successful. The entrepreneurial environment is a challenge I actively sought, but I could not do it alone.

My transformation began when I met my co-founders at a previous company. They had been a team for five or six years, and I was the final piece that brought everything together. We had the visionary, another ran delivery, and we had a technologist. My role became business development and sales, the final function they were missing. This was a profound personal transformation, as I had always been a solo contributor and had never run a sales force or managed people before. Finding the team that could take on the part I could not was the missing piece for them and for me. It was the catalyst that allowed us to start Vikar.

This experience shaped my core recommendation for aspiring entrepreneurs: Success is about timing and finding your main mission and passion. It is about being in the right place at the right time with the right people. For me, that mission is connecting people and businesses so they can thrive, which is the passion Vikar serves. You must find something you are deeply passionate about, because that energy is what sustains you through the challenges. As my father, who lived to 94, always said, to live a long and fulfilling life, you must keep both your mind and body active. That philosophy guides everything I do.

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