By going digital, financial institutions are saving the money needed for building new branches, apart from automating a significant share of their daily mundane work.

For customers, they can perform basic banking activities like account balance checking from their homes, with just a few clicks on their smartphones. 21st century digital-only banks are giving their customers more attractive fee schedules and interest rates.

As per Bankrate’s 2023 emergency savings report, 57% of Americans were uncomfortable with their level of savings, something which online banking can address with their tailored solutions.

Today, we will explain in detail why going digital might be the best banking decision for you.

24×7 Banking Access

Physical branches of a bank don’t operate on a 24×7 basis, but mobile apps do. And this comes in handy during emergencies. What if you face a medical emergency or need to transfer funds to your friend urgently? Internet banking will help you to sail through these emergencies.

You will be able to transfer money anytime and from anywhere with just a few clicks on your smartphone.

By using mobile check deposit, you can deposit a check from your house even during the night. While the legacy banks were known for their rigid duty times, digitization has broken them down completely.

No Need For Branch Visits

Checking savings bank account balance, transferring funds to another user, requesting a new chequebook, setting up standard instructions, initiating money transfers, opening a Fixed Deposit account, and paying utility bills, all these functions were used to perform through branch visits a few years back. However, the arrival of mobile banking has changed the scenario.

You can pull off the above functions from your couch through a single interface of your bank’s app, while saving the transportation cost.

Makes Saving Money An Easy Affair

United States-based Ally Bank app offers features like automatic transfers to savings accounts, along with round-ups that move rounded-up change into the customers’ savings.

The US Bank app is known for alerting customers when its algorithms spot money-saving opportunities. California-based all-digital Varo Bank is offering a ‘Save Your Pay’ feature that automatically stashes away a pre-set percentage of the customer’s paycheck each time it deposits.

Having banking apps with spending alerts has emerged as the perfect money optimization solution for 21st century customers, something which all-digital neo/challenger banks are making full use of. This helps the customers to keep track of the latters’ account expenses, apart from organizing them into spending categories like utilities, dining and transportation.

Some apps are even offering built-in budget creation solutions. Then there are digital banking interfaces, where you can set your financial goals and save money as per that. Your banking app will even allow you to download account statements to your smartphone.

Giving Tailored Financial Products

Neobanks and challenger banks are known for offering their customers tailored products through digital routes.

You can digitally draw up your financial goals and start categorizing your money-saving activity as per your needs. Ten years back, the same process would have involved immense paperwork.

The 21st century banking apps make your life easier by deploying AI and Machine Learning, which, through the analysis of large volumes of data in a quick span, predict your banking behaviour, and decode the latest market trends and sentiments, before suggesting your investment options.

AI solutions are also suggesting 21st century customers the best time to invest in stocks, apart from warning them about market risks.

In short, digital banking solutions are also helping customers to make informed decisions on financial instruments like mutual funds, stocks and bonds.

A Strong Data Security

Compared to the physical branches, digital banking apps invest heavily in guarding their customers’ crucial data.

Yes, you may run the risk of losing access to your banking app, if you don’t remember your username and password, but these are the safety features, along with multi-factor authentication, which keep your data safe.

Some bank apps have taken the game to the next level by asking its customers to log through face/fingerprint scanning, before they access their accounts.

Apps of Wells Fargo, Ally Bank, Chase and Bank of America let their users access their digital solutions to turn their debit/credit card off if it gets misplaced. Earlier, this function required the customers to call a toll-free helpline number, or in the worst case, to make a panic visit to the branches.

The post Five reasons why your banking should take a digital route appeared first on International Finance.

The digital bank offers a suite of banking products and services that are designed to keep up with our fast-paced lifestyle. With TMRW, you get the chance to spend more time enjoying life rather than doing tedious over-the-counter transactions. TMRW’s smart insights also help its customers to track their spending and savings while providing useful and valuable advice that lets you take full control of your money. TMRW tracks and monitors your bills and makes sure you don’t overspend and take care of your payments and bills in a timely manner.

International Finance Magazine sat down with Kevin Lam, Head of TMRW and Group Digital Banking, where he provided valuable insights and a better understanding of the company. Keep reading to learn more about how TMRW functions and why it is emerging as the next big thing in the Southeast Asia fintech market.

Q/A article

Q. Congratulations to UOB TMRW for winning the “Best Digital Bank” awards in 2021 for Thailand and Indonesia. Tell us more about what TMRW did in these two countries.
We launched TMRW in Thailand in March 2019 within 14 months and Indonesia in August 2020 within 11 months. We were also the first digital bank in ASEAN to build an AI-driven digital engagement engine to serve insights and solutions that are relevant to these customers based on their banking behaviour in real-time.

We are closing in towards one million digital customers since launch and more than 70 percent of these customers are new to UOB. Through TMRW, we successfully acquired a new customer demographic of “Young Professionals” and “Young Professional Families” where 75 percent of these customers are aged below 40. We also adapted TMRW to local market conditions and language preferences given our regional focus.

We strongly believe in the importance of customer engagement and advocacy. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) for both Thailand (NPS ≥ 40) and Indonesia (NPS ≥ 50) is close to the local leaders, indicating a high level of customer advocacy. This shows we are innovating in the right direction and scaling our digital architecture in customer-centric ways.

In December 2021, TMRW Pay was launched in Indonesia. This was an e-commerce loan that enables consumers in Indonesia to manage their budgeting needs conveniently. TMRW Pay offers customers the choice of deferred payment services, with zero interest for up to 90 days and instant credit approval through TMRW’s partner, Bhinneka’s website and app.

Q. Can you share some of TMRW’s innovations and how do you see it evolving in the region and your home markets?
As digital adoption has accelerated in the region, digital banking has now become the dominant preference for many. Four months after the launch of TMRW in Indonesia, we launched UOB TMRW in Singapore in October 2021, bringing together the innovation of our digital bank TMRW with the scale and product depth of our mobile app UOB Mighty onto one platform. We enhanced our digital on-boarding and digital serve capabilities, thus lowering our acquisition costs.

Recently, we were the first in the region to disrupt the traditional banking rewards experience. Through UOB TMRW, our digital banking platform in Singapore, we have built a rewards feature, named “Rewards+”, so customers can track rewards and cashback on every credit card transaction they make.

We continuously strive to drive our franchise value with our simple, engaging and transparent brand promise. Leveraging data and artificial intelligence, we aim to curate increasingly hyper-personalised banking experiences and financial solutions for our customers.

TMRW has both an attack and defence strategy. We attack like a disruptor in the markets where we are smaller and apply the learnings to defend in the larger home markets. Through our efforts, we have more than three million digitally enabled customers in ASEAN, which we now want to double to seven million retail customers being served digitally across ASEAN.

We have an exciting roadmap ahead as we continue to enhance our capabilities across digital on-boarding, payments, gamified finance and education as well as lifestyle. We aim to make banking increasingly frictionless and effortless, maintain our high-security standards and continuously improve app performance and stability.

Q. How does TMRW support and create value for UOB?
We have three business imperatives as we concurrently support UOB’s digital transformation.
Firstly, consistent with our engagement-led strategy, we intend to accelerate innovation, particularly in hyper-personalised digital banking experiences and progressive solutions to increase engagement and grow customer lifetime value.

We see hyper-personalisation as comprising 2 elements:
(1) adaptive banking through a dynamic User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI); and
(2) using Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning models that enable us to grow with our customers as their financial needs mature based on their transaction data.

This means that, in time, each customer will see an interface that is unique to them and will be provided with financial solutions that are relevant to their specific life stages.

Second, we aim to acquire customers at scale across ASEAN focusing on a growing profile of customers who prefer digital banking relationships. We also collaborate with like-minded partners to extend our reach into ecosystems and develop win-win value propositions for the business and our customers.

Third, we seek to achieve a competitive cost advantage by transitioning our customers onto digital journeys. In doing so, we enhance the customers’ experience, lower our cost-to-serve and cost-of-acquisition through the use of chatbots and automated processes.

We have embarked on an exciting new phase in our digital retail journey, where adaptive banking will make the digital banking of tomorrow smarter and more intuitive for our customers across ASEAN. Our relentless focus on engagement sets us apart in a crowded field of digital banking players in the region.

Q. What objective did TMRW accomplish by participating in the International Finance Awards 2021?
As a challenger bank in Indonesia and Thailand, our goal every day is to continue to bring to our customers the simple, engaging and transparent banking experience which they have come to expect from TMRW. It is an honour and very heartening to have our efforts recognised as the best in class in the two markets in which TMRW operates by the International Finance Award’s global panel of judges.

This recognition validates our strategy and strengthens our resolve to continuously innovate to deepen and enhance our customer relationships.

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July 22, 2014: Mobile and internet banking are now being used for transactions worth nearly £1 billion a day in the UK, according to a major industry-wide report into consumer-friendly technology by the BBA and EY.

The second Way We Bank Now report also shows that millions of customers are using contactless cards, payment by mobile and SMS balance alerts. In 2014, the rate of adoption of digital banking has grown strongly with more than 15,000 people downloading banking apps a day.

Entitled It’s in Your Hands, the study explains how technology has allowed customers to take more and more control over how they spend, move and manage their money. The findings include:

• Internet and mobile banking are now used for transactions worth £6.4 billion a week – up from £5.8 billion last year.
• Banking apps for mobiles and tablets have now been downloaded more than 14.7 million times – a 2.3 million rise since January at a rate of around 15,000 per day in 2014.
• Internet banking services typically receive 7 million log-ins a day
• Spend on contactless cards is expected to rise to £6.1 million a week this year – up from £3.2 million in 2013.
• 2,274 bank branches have been refurbished in the past two years, underlining the commitment to high street outlets.

Anthony Browne, Chief Executive of the BBA, said, “This report shows just how enthusiastically the British public is embracing mobile banking, contactless cards and a range of other consumer-friendly banking technologies. The way we bank now has made it a lot easier for us to keep track of our finances, with far more options about how we spend our money and talk to our bank. This study shows that banks have, are and will continue to compete against one another to offer customers innovative technology to win your custom. It’s a revolution putting more power in your hands.”

Tariq Khatri, EY Partner, Digital Financial Services, commented, “Digital banking is really shaking up the market, driving competition and innovation. This is great news for consumers and also potentially for the UK economy. The British public’s adoption of digital banking has reached critical mass this year and we believe the UK has a unique opportunity to achieve a leading position in digital banking. Our fintech and banking industries are some of the most advanced in the world. If supported by the right policy and regulatory environment, the IP created in building better digital banking for UK consumers could cement the UK’s position as a leader in financial services, supporting jobs and British industry.”

EY produced a chapter in the report setting out the opportunity the UK has to lead the world in digital banking services.

Source: http://www.bba.org.uk/

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