person using digital bank onboarding with phone

Delight New Banking Customers With Seamless Digital Onboarding

The undeniable fact is that without a fast, seamless identity verification path as part of their digital and mobile onboarding, banks risk losing potential customers at "hello."

According to a recent study, European financial institutions are losing almost 40 percent of applicants during digital onboarding. Meaning that nearly 40 percent of potential customers decide not to continue opening a bank account before having had the chance to test its services.

Adapting to a Digital World

Customer expectations have evolved for online banking. According to recent research by Celent, banks perform differently on various steps of the account opening process, and customers tend to find identity verification overly complicated and drawn out.

Banks and financial institutions have been moving towards digitalization for years, and the current health crisis has increased customer demand. Banking customers want, and in many cases, simply must be able to transact online. They also want full digital onboarding when opening a new account.

Banks are identified as some of the most trusted entities, but they struggle to position themselves in a digital world. Fully online banks, known as neobanks, are establishing themselves in the market. According to research from AT Kearney in 2019, neobank customer bases across Europe have grown by more than 15 million since 2011, while retail banks have decreased by two million. By 2023, Europe's neobanks could have up to 85 million customers — about 20 percent of the population over 14 years of age.

More Competitive Digital Onboarding Journeys

It's no secret that financial institutions want to deliver it all — a smooth experience while ensuring security, compliance and cost-effectiveness. Here's the thing: none of those need to be sacrificed for another. The technology necessary is available, and with the right solution provider can help in achieving it all.

While the full onboarding process includes elements that might be particular to each bank, there is a clear consensus that identity verification and validation tend to be the most time-consuming.

As part of HID Global, I'm sure you knew it was coming, but I can truly stand behind this next statement. HID's AI-powered identity verification solution is the most flexible on the market. It provides a complete end-to-end solution tailored to every business's specific requirements in minutes with full integration in a day.

Digging a bit deeper into the identity validation process, it traditionally includes three key elements: address verification, ID verification and biometric verification. The digital address verification, also referred to as eVerification, can be a drawn-out process. It is however a crucial component to be compliant with Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) legislations and contributes to making the rest of the online journey smoother in the long term. Let me tell you a bit more about how we view and approach this.

There are basically two approaches, either through "address validation" or through "address verification." The former simply highlights whether a physical address exists, the latter places an individual at a validated physical address.

Many solutions focus on either document checks or database checks as separate methods for identity verification. At HID Global, we have taken the unique approach of combining the best of both offerings along with biometric checks to ensure a seamless yet multi-layered verification of an individual's identity.

Only validating against one or two proprietary databases generates a higher percentage of non-matches and manual handling which in turn often results in customer abandonment. HID offers a single access point to multiple providers to deliver a much higher match rate and a smoother, more seamless consumer onboarding journey and experience.

As mentioned above, the best way to adapt your digital onboarding process is by putting the banking customer first. Our combination of holistic datasets with biometric and document verification checks will enable you to deliver a truly seamless onboarding experience across any customer channel in real-time.

Experience our seamless approach to customer digital onboarding with an identity verification free trial.

Niall McConachie is UK and Ireland Sales Manager within the Global Banking Consumer Authentication team at HID Global. Niall has over a decade of experience working within the cybersecurity and software space.

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