Traditional banking has all been upended by digital models as customers have shifted the way they manage their financial information. This year, the majority of the UK population will be digital banking users and almost 50% will access their bank, credit card, or brokerage accounts at least once a month via mobile device.
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