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Financial Consumers have become accustomed to having frictionless, digital experiences in every aspect of their life. These evolving expectations mean it’s no longer a question on whether you should digitize your onboarding journey, but who you will partner with for this transformation. Investing in innovation and transformation was typically done to cut costs or improve office efficiency, however the motivation has recently shifted to improving customer experience. FIs understand that to remain relevant in the competitive banking space, they must build better relationships with their customers. While there are Fintechs entering the market hoping to eat at your customers, there are also innovative Fintechs who’ve made it their mission to enable banks and credit unions to redefine what banking looks like.
As you search for vendors to work with to bring your digital onboarding vision to life, there are 4 key capabilities you want to look for in your potential provider:
1. Omnichannel, multi-persona, onboarding capabilities
As a financial institution you have consumers with different motivations and goals applying for your products, and it’s essential to take your customers on a journey that is relevant and tailored to them. A recent report showed that 77% of consumers consider experience to be just as important as the quality of a company’s products or services. So, prioritizing vendors who have features like save and resume or biometric authentication can be crucial to winning the customer.
Research from Capgemini also reveals that 76% of customers in 2021 already expect an omnichannel banking experience (sourced from The Financial Brand). So, the ability to build an omnichannel and hyper personalized customer journey should be a priority when choosing your onboarding solution. Not only that, but you also want to ensure that you can test and optimize your created experiences frequently. Many vendors will offer you the ability to build a new, digital onboarding journey but will take a “one-size-fits-all” approach and once it’s implemented, making changes and updates can be difficult. (Hint: More on optimization in key capability 4.)
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2. Integration with leading third-party fintech solutions
Third-party software partners are extremely valuable because they empower innovation. Instead of pushing your customers to interact with separate applications to sign documents or verify their identity, integrations help you deliver a seamless experience that allows applicants to stay within your platform from start to finish. Having a provider that has an array of partnerships with other fintech solutions also allows you to get to market faster, for less. Trying to have your software developers build new features in house can easily lead to extensive timelines and increased budgets and in this competitive market you want to release new features or products as soon as possible so you’re perceived as an innovator. A few integrations your provider should offer include:
- Data pre-fill
- Digital verification and fraud protection
- Electronic signatures
- Document management
- Marketing automation
3. Security and fraud protection
While a seamless customer experience is at the top of your mind while searching for a solution, security should be just as important. A recent study reported that security and fraud protection was rated as the most important mobile banking feature for 79% of users. A part of delivering an exceptional experience is establishing trust with your customers and members- including providing them with a secure environment for all the sensitive data that’s being exchanged between their browser and your institution. The large amount of data that financial institutions hold coupled with having the money to pay a ransom, puts them at a larger risk for a data breach by cybercriminals. An exceptional digital onboarding platform should provide an abundance of security precautions that prevent phishing attempts, unencrypted data, and spoofing. A few security features we’d recommend include:
- Biometric technology
- Advanced security alerts
- Multi-factor authentication
4. Analytics to support onboarding optimization
One of the biggest mistakes we see financial institutions make after transforming their onboarding, is simply forgetting it. They feel that once it been executed, they can simply “set it and forget it” and focus their attention elsewhere. But one thing I always say is that just because it’s good doesn’t mean it can’t be better. Data, when harnessed correctly with analytics will allow you to make smarter decisions, drive innovation, and make continuous improvement to your onboarding journey and ultimately beat the competition. Your onboarding solution should provide:
- Profit analytics, which will provide full understanding of customer and product profitability to promote profitable product design and customer engagement strategies.
- Embedded analytics, allows for a seamless integration of analytical capabilities into digital banking applications
- Self – Service analytics, enables end users to explore complex banking data using intuitive self-service tools
- Behavioral analytics, focuses on identifying abandonment hotspots and enabling data-driven decisions for continuous optimization
The above listed traits are essential in finding the most robust and suitable onboarding platform provider to support you in your digital transformation.
Originally published at: Temenos
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