Digital banking is becoming quite popular among Gen-Z because of the convenience it offers to them. To get new customers ‘on-board,’ innovation readiness is quite crucial. The onboarding process should be completely automated, secure, and transparent. All terms, conditions, and rules should be carefully spelt out for end users. Each customer should be treated as an individual. Customization is key to get prospective clients interested in signing up. Every customer has different banking needs so that tailor-made experiences would be ideal. In traditional banking, customers get on-boarded by a human representative who makes them feel comfortable. They help you with filling out all the paperwork, answer all your questions, and get signed up. In digital banking, all this is done via technology. Fillable forms are utilized, which means that all the information required is presented in front of you. Sometimes, chatbots and live representatives can be provided to give real-time help and support, especially when the forms are a little too extensive.

Digital banks need to have the right tools and web infrastructure to be ready to onboard customers. They don’t need to turn anyone off from signing up. As long as the forms are simple and not too cumbersome, the customer will get comfortable, and within a short time, the onboarding will be complete.

What is digital client onboarding?

Before we get into digital onboarding, we need to understand what onboarding actually means. In simple terms, it describes the process to welcome clients on to your business, in this case, a financial institution. How a potential customer becomes, a client is what onboarding entails. It includes all the paperwork, documentation and identity verification that happens each time you walk into a bank to open an account. According to Deloitte, “Onboarding is a specific process that requires identifying customers and verifying their identity with a high level of security and low level of risk.” Digital onboarding, on the other hand, is pretty much the same thing except everything is done online from the convenience of your phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop. Since everything is digital, you never have to walk inside a bank. In fact, there may never be a physical branch for that bank at all. Digital onboarding is ideally seamless and convenient, so you’re signed up in just minutes as long as you have your valid identification ready. In a digital future, this kind of onboarding will become commonplace, so traditional and digital banks are implementing convenient and user-friendly onboarding.

What are the steps for proper risk-free client onboarding

There are a few steps required to ensure proper risk-free client onboarding. The idea of documentation here is simply filling out forms online. That’s how banks collect client data digitally. It would be the same as filling paper forms in front of a banker at a branch. All this is simply done online where you just fill in your basic information.

Once that’s done, banks and other financial institutions have to verify the client data through anti-impersonation solutions. This is to protect clients and the financial institution for any potential identity theft. That brings us to the next step, which is when banks have to verify their new clients’ identity and ensure compliance to regulations drawn out by financial regulatory authorities. Such regulations would include AML, which is related to Anti Money Laundering, for example.

What Technology is required for client Onboarding in the financial services industry?

When it comes to digital onboarding, it’s about utilizing current technology to provide a seamless solution for clients to hop ‘on board.’ For example, according to Deloitte, Optical Character Recognition or OCR is one technology that can be used when collecting clients’ static data, identification documents, and verifying the accuracy of the collected data that are scanned by customers. These documents would include anything from a driver’s license to passport or a national ID card.

Anti-impersonation is important to ensure that customers or prospective clients are exactly who they claim to be. Whatever documents the prospective client submits needs to match their identity to ensure there’s no identity fraud. In the UK, Knowledge-based Authentication technology is commonly used, while Facial Recognition is more common in the United States.

Further verification of the identity is done via the ‘Know Your Customer’ aka KYC technology. In order to comply with AML/ CTF regulations, this helps bank fact check customer data via background checks on the static data that was input by them when applying for an account. It even helps examine risks that each potential customer would present. This is known as contemporary risk.

In normal circumstances, one signs documents with pen on paper. How can one do that digitally? Technologies such as an electronic signature or e-sign is a surety that both the customer and institution have signed a contractual agreement that is binding.

What are the benefits of proper client onboarding?

The number one benefit to proper client onboarding is earning the prospective client’s trust. Redefining the user experience is vital to a solid onboarding experience. At the end of the user interface or UI is one that the prospective digital client interacts with the most on the financial institution’s website. Everything is accessible and transparent; this includes all the fine print, rules, regulations, terms and conditions. Since everything is digital, there’s no need for paper or worrying about saving folders or stacks of paper. One can access everything online as long as everything is laid out properly.

What is Microsoft office 365 adding to enhance client onboarding for the financial services?

What’s important in client onboarding, especially digitally, is that the process is completely seamless for the end-user. The end-user here would be a prospective client. The UI needs to be clean, easy to understand and use, and should optimize for both desktop and mobile devices. The customer pain points need to be considered when designing an effective onboarding process. A proper customer journey should be outlined before designing the onboarding process. Everything from the initial stage when the customer loads the first landing page or in this case, the welcome page, should be entirely user-friendly. That’s where the journey begins and ends when the application is finally submitted. A thank you page pops up with an email confirmation sent as well. Confirmation can be sent to a cellphone as well.

Keeping all this in mind, Microsoft Office 365 presents an all-in-one solution for client onboarding. Since Office 365 runs in the cloud, all customer data can be seamlessly stored in the cloud and would allow the UI to be always online as well. Office 365 is also compliant with regulations from financial regulatory authorities, so that’s an additional benefit. The customer data can be compiled properly and can be used for background checks, and so on. A proper client database can be maintained and updated with each new client acquisition. Office 365 can be extremely vital for all client onboarding initiatives undertaken by digital banks or those traditional banks that have a digital wing.

Infowise

infowise is a leading provider of forms and processes solutions for the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Financial services providers make a large section of our client's list. As authors of productivity and agility software, we're pleased, yet not surprised that these global financial businesses have adopted our tools in their daily productivity cycles. Our flagship package Infowise Ultimate Forms is an integrated suite of SharePoint components that enables users to create advanced, dynamic forms, sophisticated business processes and striking visualization.
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