Digital onboarding for bank customers – what's yours like?

Customers are now demanding fast and flexible interactions with their banks. And, they expect to be able to interact and transact at any time, regardless of location or channel. Yet, for too many banking customers onboarding is a frustrating experience with multiple friction points.

These commonly include being re-routed to different channels, needing to provide physical identification or having to answer the same questions several times. In fact, the latest figures suggest that 38% of banking customers drop out during onboarding. That's mainly due to frustration with the process or the volume of information required.

Customer onboarding is a journey, not a transaction

How you onboard your new customers sets the tone for your ongoing banking relationship with them. Get it right and you increase customer lifetime value (LTV), reduce churn and turn new customers into brand ambassadors. Most banks already recognize the operational efficiencies and cost savings of automated digital processes over in-branch paperwork.  But, creating a digital onboarding experience that delights will add much more value than simple cost savings.

So, are your customers delighted by your onboarding process? Are they served in a personalized manner with the flexibility to switch seamlessly between channels of their choice? Every customer is different; some are happy to do everything digitally, others prefer to visit a branch or combine the two.

In a frictionless and engaging onboarding process, a single platform is able to serve different customers via their optimized channel. Here's how, for customers like Andrew, Zoe, Michel and John, VeriPark's VeriChannel digital onboarding solution can make that work.

Delighting tech-savvy customers

For a tech-savvy customer like Andrew, everything has to be digital. He's happy with downloading a mobile app and scanning or uploading all the required documents for identification. He's even comfortable with a liveness detection which asks Andrew to make some random facial movements such as blinking, smiling, looking at his left or right so that the bank can identify him and make sure that he really is the person who says he is. At the final step he digitally signs the account opening contract.

Zoe's also fine with most digital processes. Like Andrew, she uploads documents and her digital signature. But, to verify her ID, she prefers to have a video call with a real-human agent.  This way her details are verified directly via video chat which saves her the time and effort involved in visiting a branch. It's a win-win for both Zoe and the bank as the ID verification through video banking enables the bank to still get a "face-to-face" interaction while providing the convenience Zoe demands.  

A reassuring helping hand

Michel on the other hand is more conventional. Once he's input his personal and contact details online, he opts to present physical documents rather than uploading them. He schedules an appointment at his preferred branch, where they pick up where he left off and upload the documents for him. Crucially, this switch between channels is seamless with the VeriChannel platform; his branch representative can see his details captured online, so he doesn't need to repeat those in the branch.

John is a different type of customer. He's an entrepreneur with a manic schedule, so he's asked Nancy, his direct sales agent from the bank to visit his office. Once they've agreed on the account and services that best meet John's banking needs, Nancy takes a photo of his passport with her phone. This automatically populates John's personal details so all he has to do is digitally sign the application and Nancy submits it on his behalf.

VeriPark drives seamless digital customer onboarding with Dynamics 365

Industry research suggests that banks (and their customers) face four key challenges during the digital onboarding process. These include: Abandoned Pages, Account Opening, Uploading Documents and Signing Documents. VeriPark's VeriChannel digital onboarding solution smoothes the account opening process and overcomes these frictions with features such as easy document generation, easy document signing with DocuSign, and video banking capability.

That enables banks to happily accommodate tech savvy or tech literate customers like Andrew and Zoe, as well as more conventional customers like Michel and super-busy executives such as John. Importantly, it also feeds this essential customer data into a back office CRM system, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365.

In addition to the Dynamics 365 integration, VeriPark's digital onboarding solution also works closely with Microsoft Cognitive Services, which provides AI-powered identification technology that helps to reach a broader set of new customers while increasing revenue and differentiate in the competition.

The platform works in a similar way with corporate customers. Micro businesses and SMEs can input their details and complete a business needs assessment that recommends suitable products and services, such as international trade finance, cash management or a corporate card. The system can also instantly check credit ratings and blacklists – a process that traditionally takes several days.

Real life transformations

ING Turkey used VeriBranch (VeriPark's integrated branch automation solution) to transform their customer onboarding experience. The results have been great. For example, the time to onboard a retail or SME customer within a Branch decreased from 25 minutes to just 6 minutes. This has enabled ING Turkey's employees to spend more time on the things that matter more to their customers and deliver personalized services and offers.

In the banking industry, 38% of customers said User Experience (UX) was the most important criterion when choosing a digital bank. Yet, too often, the onboarding process involves stacks of paperwork, branch visits, overnight mailings, and repeated data requests. Banks that get customer onboarding right can improve customer satisfaction, lower churn, and gain better insights into customer preferences and desires, all while reducing costs and enhancing regulatory compliance.

E-book "5 Steps to a Seamless Digital Onboarding".

How you onboard your customers sets the tone for the entire banking relationship going forward. Download our Digital Onboarding e-book and learn how to get it right, increase customer lifetime value, reduce churn and turn new customers into brand ambassadors