NEOBANKS OF THE WORLD: ONBOARDING
Kissandtell
Opening an account can be an emotional experience for all concerned. Which is why Peter-Jan Van De Venn Strategic Director at Mobiquity, is studying the onboarding processes at European banks to inform those future ‘first kisses’
Digital consultancy Mobiquity was given a blank canvas by Bahrainbased Bank ABC when it called in the experts to help create Ila, the first Cloud-based, digital-only bank in the Middle East. And with a brief to target the more than 100 million tech-savvy Millennials in a region where half of all business owners are aged under 35, two things were immediately crystal clear – the neobank had to deliver groundbreaking levels of technology and the customer experience (CX) had to be seamless. Mobiquity’s development team subsequently conducted detailed research of the target market in Bahrain to understand people’s goals, struggles, fears and ambitions, analysing some 30,000 user reviews. The results demonstrated the need to provide holistic personalised financial
solutions built around customer needs and aspirations, and aligning products and services around their lifestyles – in short, going beyond banking. Vitally, that all had to be under-pinned by a future-proofed technology infrastructure. Backbase was chosen for Ila’s software platform and Jumio’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered face biometrics software selected for identity verification. Jumio’s technology enables the bank to verify online customers in minutes by having them first capture a picture of their government-issued ID with a smartphone and then take a selfie, with certified liveness detection functionality. This process ensures that the customer is who they claim to be and are physically present during the onboarding process, thereby keeping Ila compliant with strict local know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) mandates. As Bank ABC expands its digital operations globally and in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa)region, Jumio will be able to support that growth with its ability to verify IDs digitally across many different geographies. And why is such slick onboarding so important? Peter-Jan
Van De Venn, strategic director at Mobiquity, which itself announced a partnership deal with Jumio last May, believes it is now vital to successfully growing a business. That’s even more true as digitisation is rapidly accelerated across more areas of our lives, fuelled by changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The quality of that ‘first kiss’ with potential customers has never been more crucial than it is right now. “Customer experience is key and so it’s very important that banks are able to cope with the high expectations of today’s digital customer experience. That means that they need to have a frictionless onboarding process,” Van De Venn explains, “otherwise, what you typically see is that people will just ‘drop off’. Onboarding is the process with the biggest drop-off rate in banks, so the better and easier yours is, the more clients you will get. It’s a big challenge to do it well, though, because it is still necessary to get a lot of information, so the easier you can make it for clients, the better.” Indeed, research shows that more than 40 per cent of potential customers will abandon the onboarding process if faced by cumbersome and time-consuming steps in setting up accounts.
In love with onboarding: Consumers will choose banks that are easy to sign up to
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