Frictionless Digital Onboarding For Financial Institutions

Frictionless Digital Onboarding Using Identity Verification

Many industries have seen seismic shifts in their business approaches in recent years, the common denominator being technology and how it is deployed. Take the temporary accommodation business, encompassing the likes of hotels and short stay apartments. Wind back the clock 20 years and few could have imagined an era when one industry newcomer, Airbnb,  would have a valuation equal to a clutch of veteran behemoths.

Airbnb’s arrival shook up the market like no other and the result is a market valuation of over $100 billion, as much as the combined value of six leading global chain hotels. Not bad for an organisation that doesn’t even own one physical hotel!

And now another traditional industry is being turned inside out – banking.

Previously viewed as impenetrable to all but those with terrifically deep pockets, smart and creative deployment of technology to improve the customer experience end-to-end is changing the banking industry like never before in its 2,000+ year history. And it all started in the UK with the challenger banks.

Defined as small-medium retail operations set up with the purpose of competing against other, larger and more established banking institutions, challenger banks are heralding an exciting era in finance for customers. They are not just restricted to the UK now.

Good Customer Experience Leads To Loyalty

On average, people stay with their banks longer than they will stay with their partner – the current average customer stays loyal for 17 years, according to the banking trade body the BBA. First experiences with a brand therefore count for a huge amount; customers don’t care about how elegant an organisation’s IT set-up might be in the back office, they care much more about what their onboarding experience at the front end is like.

For banks and other financial organisations, this means winning new clients ranks highest because each onboarded customer is likely to become a loyal account holder for years to come. Make the onboarding experience long and complicated at your peril. Investment in digital onboarding through online and mobile channels is no longer a nice to have.

According to Forbes, digital account opening (DAO) is the most popular technology in banking for the third consecutive year. Close to 80% of all financial institutions added new DAO systems or enhance their existing ones in 2020. Onboarding is a golden opportunity for FIs to demonstrate a superior customer journey but many squander that opportunity by making the experience long and complicated.

Peter Ramsey, founder of the UX site Built for Mars, proved that it took up to five times as many clicks to open an account with one of the old guard in the UK than with a new challenger. The problem of client leakage is real, just as customers’ patience with laggards is thin.

Friction Impacts Your Digital Onboarding

Even the best digital experiences and most thought-out process can come under stress when live customers are trying to navigate your system, such as an application process. Resulting in prospective customers abandoning your onboarding process.

We have highlighted the most common pressure points where users can face friction:

User focused design – Strong user experience (UX) throughout your digital touchpoints is a cornerstone in reducing customer abandonment. The number of clicks associated with completing an onboard or specific fields within an application form can directly impact results. The underlying objective of any digital onboarding process is to be as easy as possible for customers, whilst maintaining the integrity of the process. So, it’s important to structure this for users and not your internal administrative processes.

Psychological & behavioural factors – Just like how your friendly human staff members are focused on building trust with your prospective customers, your digital onboarding process should be focused on doing the same to maximise results. For example, don’t ask for the more personal details associated with their account and group similar tasks together to again streamline the process. Even minor details like using too many capital letters can affect overall perceptions of trust!

Advocating AI – Artificial Intelligence, even in the simplest form of a well-structured chatbot, has a direct impact on the conversion rates for new customer sign-ups. Chatbots can also be linked to a real customer service agent within office hours which is again proven to increase the number of customers completing applications.

Pre-Fill & Validation Services – It is also possible to implement a range of pre-filled information to assist in reducing the number of fields your customers have to fill in directly during the onboarding process. This covers traditional KYC elements to validate addresses, through to more recent enhancements such as using a device camera to take a picture of credit card details. Live data checks behind the scenes in real time as a customer is filling out a form, such as mobile number to name match, can verify the details provided are genuine.

Mobile Number Verification – In a similar fashion, but in a way unnoticed by customers, it is possible to integrate a full range of security validation features into your customer onboarding via a mobile number validation & verification tool or API. From the data you have already captured during your onboarding process, it’s possible to verify not only if a customer is real & active – but also the key information provided matches that used with the mobile device in question. This can vastly reduce levels of account fraud when factored into your digital onboarding strategy and can also be used as an ongoing real time monitor for your existing customers.

Mobile Data Intelligence – The Mobile Verification Process

There are several verification options available in the market. These range from simple options like security questions through to more specific functionality, such as uploading and scanning a photo to be checked against a customer’s ID documents or passport.

Mobile number intelligence and mobile device verification are powerful tools in streamlining this process whilst still providing an enhanced level of account accuracy, security and fraud prevention. There are many data points both within your device and across mobile networks which can be analysed to validate whether a user is authentic. One of the best features is that this can all be done seamlessly, behind the scenes and in a matter of milliseconds.

There are several key points to the overall mobile verification process, which is started when a customer submits their mobile phone number on a sign up page or application:

Valid Number Check – Our API confirms that the mobile number provided is real and active.

Location – Our verification API software analyses the relevant location of the mobile number and other live network data to determine if the number is actually in the country customers say they are. Many of our data points are also available globally, so your onboarding process can remain constant.

Name and Number Authentication – This is then checked against the live mobile network operator databases in the location in question.

Integrated Analysis & Results – Once checked your verified results are returned within a fraction of a second, providing additional security benefits with no added friction for your customer. Our API allows you to integrate a number validity check into existing workflows for your customer onboarding. Our verification platform is also georedundant and automatically use the best combination of data sources to return the information you need to see as part of your query.

Ongoing Fraud Prevention – Specifically with our Verify Protect software suite, users also have the ability to proactively monitor the growing risk of user account fraud on an ongoing basis. All your customer mobile numbers can be monitored to give real-time protection, meaning you can target your security settings to make sure you only add friction to their login process when needed. This allows you to ensure the numbers in your store remain active, real, and less susceptible to account takeover fraud.

Why Does Mobile Device Intelligence Reduce Friction?

A good question. To sum this up the beauty lies in the classic adage that ‘less is more’. From less customer data compared to other verification methods, it’s possible to learn a lot more about your customers and provide a more secure & streamlined onboarding experience for them.

Furthermore, integration is key, meaning that it’s possible to implement additional security checks based on a customer’s mobile numbers which they are usually already providing in most cases. Our team of specialists are also on hand if you have specific questions about how this would integrate with your existing technical setup.

As technologies develop, an ever-increasing range of information can be extracted from a customer’s mobile device to help validate their identity – including the growing use of bio-metric data. The more this becomes a seamless part of the user process, the more mobile data can help protect your customers. Speak to our team of specialists to find the perfect solution for your business today.

Real Time Verification For Onboarding

Banks are strictly regulated and the world of Identity can be a real headache. Proving their customers really are who they say they are is integral to the onboarding process, as indeed it is with ongoing transactional business thereafter. The process has to be as frictionless as possible as well. Have we mentioned people’s patience? Knowing your customers (KYC) isn’t easy but this is where the TMT Analysis team step in to lighten the load.

A person’s mobile phone number is fast becoming integral to not only their identity but any KYC process. Mobile phones however can be a hotbed for account takeover, SIM swap fraud, port out fraud and call divert fraud. Enter stage right our solution Verify which is powered by our global mobile numbering intelligence.

As a leading provider of mobile number intelligence globally, we gather data from countries every day and store the status of over 2.5 billion numbers. This data, together with our live feeds with the leading operators in the mobile industry, gives a wide range of intelligence on the status and history of a number in a fraction of a second.  And it’s this data which powers many of the world’s leading identity providers and banks. Building trust is at the heart of everything TMT Analysis does.

Speak to us today about how TMT ID can help your business info@tmtid.com.