Technology has changed customer expectations to adapt to their busy day-to-day lives, and ensuring that customers have the fastest, most efficient and secure experience is important to financial institutions. Digital banking has rapidly disrupted the sector, and now as many as 63% of customers do their banking online.

Here are three ways financial organisations can enhance onboarding (and customer confidence) in today’s digital world:

1. Go mobile

Almost half of UK millennials handle their bank transactions digitally, a figure which is set to rise in the coming years. Customers have more choices than ever before, and it’s crucial that financial institutions stay ahead of their competitions.

To stay at the forefront of the industry, banks need to build new strategies for onboarding, analysing each step of the process to determine levels of customer abandonment. Offerings need to be optimised to fit into the mobile, omnichannel world of customers. When financial institutions begin to improve existing ways of collecting digital data, it will result in more deposit accounts opened, more credit cards issues, and ultimately more satisfied customers.

2. Prioritise security

The rapid digitisation of consumers’ financial lives exposes them to more danger. With cyber crime costing businesses over £1 billion in the past year alone, it’s imperative large banks, federal agencies, and big retailers evaluate all the modern day risks to ensure the utmost customer confidence and satisfaction.

One of the ways organisations can prevent fraudulent activities is to implement tools that streamline the onboarding process, such as a managed address verification service that ensures all data is kept up to date. Address verification works via an application processing interface (API), which can be customised to suit internal systems use or on customer facing websites.

3. Cater to your customers

Major banks are starting to realise the importance of prioritising the online user experience, and one of the ways they can do this is through address verification technology. The ability to verify customer addresses on the spot streamlines the process, saving time and greatly reducing the margin for error.

The overall performance of online banking systems is key, and potential issues like load speed and latency need to be taken into account and managed. Ensuring that these backend issues are able to deliver is critical to driving customer engagement. As financial organisations increase their numbers of mobile users, they should seek out new approaches to enhancing their infrastructure for customers to transact regardless of the device used.

Banks should make every effort to review their customer touchpoints and see where they can add value, whether it’s new account registration, change of address or fraud detection or to check for opportunities to confirm user details. Data capture is equally important, and if companies want to maintain effective data capture strategy they mustn’t cut corners. It’s vital to have the right customer information first hand to avoid conflicts further down the line.

Customer centricity is no longer a buzzword. Today’s consumer is informed, has a voice, and knows what they want. As such, being able to deliver a seamless experience, regardless of the device should be every business’s top priority.

Chris Boaz is Head of Marketing at PCA Predict

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A new study by Dun & Bradstreet shows compliance professionals anticipate a more complex and uncertain future, which will increase data governance challenges and cause difficulties in the customer journey.

This quantitative research was carried out in November 2016 by independent research company Censuswide. Responses were gathered from 100 compliance, legal and operations professionals within UK banks and financial institutions.

The research found that almost half (49%) believe that it will become harder for their organisation to comply with financial regulation over the next 12 months. Reflecting this, two-fifths (40%) of compliance professionals also expect customer onboarding times to increase over the next five years.

42% of respondents say it currently takes them three to four working days to onboard a new customer, with 12% saying it takes up to six working days. Three-quarters (75%) of respondents believe that CDD (Customer Due Diligence)-related delays have a negative effect on the customer experience, with increased regulation resulting in significant business impact such as taking on less business and a third (32%) of respondents saying they have had to build larger teams to manage the process.

About half of respondents (45%) say that monitoring the compliance status of customers on an ongoing basis is “fairly” or “very” difficult. Moreover, over a quarter (28%) say that increased time – between 3 and 4 working days – to identify and compile a report on a client that posed a regulatory risk could strain sales and compliance teams, with the potential for revenue loss.

“By valuing the positive impact of a healthy compliance function on the rest of the business, banks and financial institutions can create CDD processes that will meet current and future demands,” said Thomas Cosgrove, Strategy Leader, Global Compliance Solutions, Dun & Bradstreet. “Through intelligent compliance practices, teams can not only manage risk effectively, but actually improve the onboarding process, thus enhancing the customer experience and creating a competitive advantage over rival firms. An effective compliance team not only protects the bank from risks (financial, regulatory, reputational), but also serves as a showcase of the institution’s commitment to responsible business and its ability to protect the interests of customers.”

Compliance professionals believe that using technology is the way to respond to the changing regulatory landscape, with 50% saying they will need to invest in solutions within the next five years. Currently, few organisations are proactively enhancing their level of sophistication around CDD, as only 7% have taken steps to centrally manage and automate procedures. Compliance professionals recognise the advantages that automation would bring to the onboarding process, in particular, including faster times to revenue (60%) and improved customer experience (56%).

“In an age where the regulatory landscape is becoming more challenging and evasion techniques are growing in sophistication, businesses should look to arm their compliance teams with the best tools available,” continued Cosgrove. “Intelligent application of robust data can automate parts of the compliance process, enabling knowledge workers to focus on exceptional cases, improving onboarding speeds and focusing scarce resources on higher value activities. The latest technology is important, but systems are only as powerful as the information that flows into them. Ultimately, teams must ensure the quality and timeliness of the data they use is as robust as possible.”

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