In today’s evolving financial landscape, banks are under constant pressure to enhance their operational efficiency, reduce costs, ensure compliance, and maintain their competitive edge.  Manual processes and resource inefficiencies have been significant challenges, but integration platforms are stepping in as the financial sector’s silver bullet.  Let’s dive into how integration platforms effectively address these critical issues.

1.    Operational Efficiencies:  Streamlining Manual Processes

Banks have long grappled with manual processes that hamper efficiency and hinder day-to-day operations.  Integration platforms offer a lifeline by automating and streamlining these processes.

• Automation: Integration platforms automate data flows between disparate systems, reducing the need for manual data entry and minimizing human error.
• Workflow Optimization: They enable the creation of workflows that route information and tasks seamlessly through the organization, making the processes more efficient.

2.   Cost Escalation:  Reducing Operational Expenses

The manual nature of many banking operations often leads to higher operational costs, negatively impacting the bank’s profitability.  Integration platforms help curb these expenses.

• Cost-Efficient Automation: Automation through integration platforms reduces the need for manual labor, leading to lower operational costs.
• Resource Allocation: Banks can allocate resources more efficiently by automating repetitive tasks, ensuring that human resources are directed towards more value-added activities.

3.   Errors and Compliance Challenges:  Ensuring Accuracy and Regulatory Compliance

In the highly regulated banking sector, errors and compliance challenges are serious concerns.  Integration platforms provide the much-needed tools to tackle these issues.

• Data Accuracy: Integration platforms facilitate data consistency, reducing the likelihood of errors and improving the accuracy of financial transactions and reports.
• Compliance Features: Making integration platforms offer features like audit logs and data encryption, making it easier for banks to meet regulatory requirements.

4.   Maintaining Competitiveness:  Staying Ahead of the Curve

To thrive in the dynamic financial environment, banks must address these issues head-on to meet customer expectations and stay competitive.

• Innovation: By automating and streamlining operations, banks free up valuable resources that can be allocated to innovative initiatives, helping them adapt to new technologies and foster growth.
• Customer Satisfaction: Improved operational efficiency and automation lead to faster service delivery, smoother customer interactions, and ultimately enhanced customer satisfaction.

5.   Absence of Automation:  Accelerating Processes

The absence of streamlined and automated systems within banks hampers customer experiences by causing delays and increasing the potential for errors.

• Process Acceleration: Integration platforms automate repetitive tasks, allowing for faster and more accurate service delivery to customers.
• Error Reduction: Automation minimizes the potential for human errors, contributing to improved customer experiences.

6.   Reduced Productivity:  Empowering Employees

The lack of automation reduces overall productivity, as employees spend time on repetitive tasks that could be automated.

• Employee Empowerment: Automation allows employees to focus on higher-value tasks, improving productivity and job satisfaction.
• Resource Allocation: Efficient resource allocation ensures that the bank’s human resources are dedicated to tasks that truly require their expertise.

In conclusion, integration platforms like IgniteConnex offer a strategic solution to tackle the critical challenges confronting the banking sector.  By seamlessly facilitating resource optimization, cost reduction, productivity enhancement, compliance assurance, innovation cultivation, and the elevation of customer experiences, IgniteConnex empowers banks to not only navigate the dynamic financial landscape but also to excel in delivering added value to their customers, all while securing a strong, competitive position.

Implementing a digital bank account opening solution at your financial institution is no longer just a nice option to offer your customers but a necessity if you want your institution to thrive. Studies show that institutions that made digital onboarding available to their customers experienced market growth of 16%. In contrast, institutions that did not offer robust digital options saw their revenue growth decreased by 9% year over year.

Digital bank account opening solutions make opening an account quick and easy. That way, customers are more likely to engage with your financial institution, and you can experience lower application abandonment rates overall. To make the account opening process simple for your customers, it’s up to you to build a secure, user-friendly system that fully integrates with your institution’s existing technology. Here are four challenges you may face when implementing new digital bank account opening technology and how IgniteConnex can help you overcome them.

1. Meeting Security and Privacy Standards

Customers trust you to protect their money from hackers and potential fraud. This means your institution needs to verify that the person opening a new account is who they say they are and validate that the same person is accessing the account each time a new transaction occurs.

During the in-person onboarding process, you would have the customer present documentation proving their identity and then provide them with a PIN or other input key so they can access their account. Unfortunately, traditional account opening methods that require customers to travel to the bank or financial institution can slow down your application process. Offering digital bank account opening solutions can increase account opening metrics for your business.

IgniteConnex is a digital bank account opening solution that can make the identity verification process quick and simple for your customers. We integrate with a number of authentication databases that reliably verify and validate applicants’ identities in just moments, so you can quickly open accounts without fear of fraud.

2. Lengthy Application Processes

Building a digital onboarding system is more than just uploading the forms from your in-person application process into an app; the overall process can be streamlined to take less than 10 minutes and ideally less than 5. Any longer than that and around 40% of applicants will abandon the process.

Long forms that ask customers for a lot of information or an identity verification system that requires them to upload documents and then wait for manual approval can slow down the onboarding process and drive customers away.

IgniteConnex provides a streamlined account opening solution that collects only the information you absolutely need from your customers to ensure a quick and secure process. Using IgniteConnex technology, you can set your customers up with a new account in only a few minutes, giving you a competitive advantage and posing your institution for more sophisticated growth.

3. Customers Can’t Continue the Application

Sometimes, circumstances might prevent customers from finishing their account application in one session, or the customer might have a question that requires an in-person visit or phone call to your branch location. When an application has already been initiated on their mobile device, it is incredibly frustrating to arrive at your in-person location for help and find that they have to start a whole new application.

What is omnichannel account opening and why is it crucial?

Omnichannel account opening is when a customer starts the account application process in one channel, like over the phone or online, and then finishes through another medium, such as in person. This decreases application abandonment by allowing customers to ask questions or seek guidance and then return to the application where they left off instead of starting over again.

IgniteConnex integrates with your legacy systems so that customers can access their application without having to start the application from the beginning again. This addresses the customer need and can act as a feature to increase account openings over time.

4. A Digital Onboarding Interface That Is Difficult to Navigate

The appeal of digital bank account opening for your customers is that it should be quicker and easier than in-person or legacy systems. However, if your application system is challenging to navigate or confusing for your customers, you lose that advantage. Remember that you want your customers to set up their new account in around five minutes, so you don’t have time for them to be confused about what the application is asking for or have to stop and look up answers.

Typing large amounts of information on a smartphone keyboard is tedious, so enabling automatic data entry and short answers whenever possible can make account opening via mobile a more pleasant experience.

IgniteConnex is a scalable digital bank account opening solution designed by bankers for bankers. Our technology prioritizes high-speed and low friction with an excellent user experience to make opening a new account painless for your customers and help your institution bring in more revenue.

Key Takeaways:

• Implementing a digital bank account opening process is essential but poses challenges for your institution.
• Typical identity verification processes that ensure security is time-consuming and more likely to lead to abandoned applications.
• The ability to revisit in-progress applications can increase account open rates over time.
• IgniteConnex combines security for your institution with a quick, easy user experience for your customers so you can see real financial growth.

Choosing The Best Digital Bank Account Opening Solution

IgniteConnex provides the most secure, user-friendly digital bank account opening technologies designed by bankers for bankers. We can help kickstart financial institutions’ digital transformation by enhancing the account opening experience and approval process for new customers. Access a cost-effective digital onboarding solution that can offer your financial institution enhanced security, a good return on investment, and scalable growth. Schedule a Demo to learn more!

Technology has given us the ability to access information and services almost instantly. When Netflix started, you had to go online, select the movie you wanted to watch, and then wait for the DVD to come to your house. Now you can open the app, choose from hundreds of movies and TV show options, and start watching instantly. Can’t find what you’re looking for on Netflix? You can probably locate it on one of the dozens of other available streaming platforms and access it on your device just as quickly. This brings us to what boosts all financial institution’s margins – a user experience that is simple enough to maintain the attention of easily distracted consumers.

The ability to get what we want instantly has turned into an expectation in all areas of our lives as consumers. Opening an account using traditional banking methods is anything but instant. If your financial institution cannot offer an onboarding process that meets customer demands for instant gratification, they’ll be looking for another financial institution that can. You can boost your financial institution’s margins by offering customers a quicker, easier onboarding process through digital account opening technology.

Instant Gratification: Technology and Patience

Thanks to the internet, you can now have almost the entire wealth of human knowledge at your fingertips in seconds. Unfortunately, seconds may still be too long for some users. According to a study by UMass Amherst, most viewers will abandon an online video if it takes more than 2 seconds to load.

Ironically, our instant access to so much information has also eroded our patience for actually absorbing information. The Nielsen Norman Group found that most users leave a webpage after having only visited long enough to read about 20% of the text displayed on that page.

The nature of the internet is that if users cannot get what they’re looking for fast enough from one website, they will quickly abandon it and find a site with a better response time. This pattern has gone beyond webpage loading times and started to impact almost every aspect of life, including banking.

Customers are always looking for the fastest, most efficient, most convenient way to manage their money. If their current institution doesn’t offer what they’re looking for, they are not hesitant to switch to a bank or credit union with better, faster online options.

Online Account Opening vs. Traditional Account Opening

One of the ways to offer your customers a faster experience than other banks is by enabling them to open an account completely online. In-person account opening is something that people just don’t have time for anymore. First, they have to schedule a time to go into their local branch’s location during normal business hours. Then, they have to gather up their relevant identifying documents and bring them to the meeting. Once there, they will be asked to read and sign stacks of paperwork. The process is anything but instant.

Online account opening can boost your financial institution’s margins because it allows your customers to open an account on their schedule from any location that is convenient to them. Improving your customer’s experience doesn’t end with just offering a digital onboarding process—you need to remove as much friction from that process. If you ask them to fill out lengthy forms on their phone or provide pictures of documentation they don’t have in reach, they are more likely to abandon their application. 

An excellent digital account opening solution that effectively boosts your financial institution’s margins should not just be your in-person application converted into a digital form. You need to streamline the whole process so that customers can have an open account with money in it at your institution within a matter of minutes.

Customer Satisfaction and Your Profit Margin

Speed is one of the top-three factors in ensuring customer satisfaction when it comes to online banking. Consistently satisfied customers become loyal, long-term customers, and they are more likely to recommend your institution to others.

How can a financial institution profit through instant gratification? 

Today’s customers don’t want to wait for anything; they want satisfaction right now. By offering a digital onboarding process that supports instant account opening, you can entice more customers to do their banking with you.

A low-friction, user-friendly online account opening system satisfies your customers’ need for instant gratification in banking services, helps you acquire new customers, and brings more revenue, increasing your financial institution’s margins. When you generate more revenue, as long as your expenses stay the same, you increase your profit margin, and your institution experiences financial growth.

Key Takeaways:

• Thanks to the internet, most customers expect instant gratification and will not accept less.
• Online account opening is far more immediate and convenient than in-person account opening.
• Online account opening needs to be as low-friction and user-friendly as possible to satisfy the need for instant gratification.
• An efficient digital onboarding process improves the completion rate of applications and brings more customers and revenue into your financial institution.
• Access to secure, user-friendly digital bank account opening technologies makes digital onboarding easy for you and your customers, so you can increase your financial institution’s margins.

The Best Digital Bank Account Opening Solution

IgniteConnex provides a secure, user-friendly digital bank account opening technology that makes digital onboarding easy for both you and your customers. We offer intuitive, secure solutions designed by bankers for banks.  We can help kickstart financial institutions’ digital transformation by enhancing the account opening experience and approval process for new customers. Access a cost-effective digital onboarding solution that can offer your financial institution enhanced security, a good return on investment, and scalable growth.  Schedule a Demo to learn more!

When it comes to upgrading or installing new technologies and solutions, the question your business always has to ask is whether the amount of time and money put into the new project will cost more than the new revenue generated. If the result is money lost, then it was a wasted venture.

Money made in relation to the money spent on new technologies, projects, or labor is called the return on investment, or ROI. A large return on investment can mean exponential growth for your company, while a negative ROI can spell disaster. If questions about the potential ROI are what is stopping your financial institution from making the transition to digital account opening solutions, it’s time to put your worries aside. Studies and evidence from banking companies across the country have consistently shown that the potential return on investment from digital account opening technologies is well worth the time and money invested into the transition process.

What is the ROI of investing in digital account opening solutions? 

Investing in digital account opening technology helps you attract more customers, keeps current customers highly satisfied and engaged, and saves your financial institution money that is usually wasted performing manual tasks.

 

Attract new customers who might otherwise not bank with you

Evidence points to a growing number of customers who prefer mobile banking over traditional banking. 89% of those surveyed by Insider Intelligence’s Mobile Banking Competitive Edge Study (2018) said they used mobile banking, up six points from the previous year. That included 97% of millennials and 91% of Gen Z, the majority of the future customer base in the next decades. The study also indicated that 64% of mobile users said they would research a bank’s mobile offerings before they opened an account and more than half said they would change banks if their current institution’s mobile experience didn’t stack up. 

Offering a robust and user-friendly mobile experience can help your institution stand out in a crowded market. If you can build a reputation for offering an enhanced, digital-first banking experience, former loyal customers of other banks or interested applicants who have never heard of you before may be persuaded to open accounts. More accounts mean more deposits and more revenue for your institution.

Keep new customers engaged

Research has shown that a user whose account was automatically approved is five times more valuable to your institution than a user who was manually approved. Your customer’s enthusiasm for banking with you will never be higher than the moment they decide to open an account. The faster you can get them from that moment to depositing money, the more sustained that engagement becomes. If they are placed through a manual review queue and not approved until a day later, they are no longer as excited and are likely to deposit a smaller amount of money.

Digital-first application processes, especially ones effectively designed to minimize friction, can have a new account opened within minutes of the customer deciding to start an application.

Save money on manual review processes

If you have a real person reviewing and approving applications, you have to pay them a salary to do so and pay for the resources that enable them to do that job. Manual review processes take longer than automatic ones, and as the saying goes: in business, time is money.

Digital account opening technologies rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning to vet and approve applicants automatically without the need for human interference. Computers and algorithms are far less likely to make mistakes than human beings, and in the financial industry, mistakes can end up costing your institution big. 

The benefits of digital solutions

While you need to invest money in order to implement a digital account opening technology into your current system, you will end up saving much more in the long run. How much money will you save? If financial institutions automate as little as 7% of all their operations, they could save between $4 billion to $12 billion.

Key Takeaways:

• Potential return on investment is a key factor in most business decisions 
• Implementing digital-first banking solutions offers a large ROI for financial institutions.
• Digital account opening technologies rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning to vet and approve applicants automatically without the need for human interference.
• Offering a robust and user-friendly mobile experience can help your institution stand out in a crowded market. 
• Offering a seamless digital account opening project attracts new customers, keeps customers engaged, and saves you money on internal operations.

Unsure where to start when it comes to your bank’s digital transformation?

Start where your customers start—the account opening process. This is the best way to make a great digital first impression with customers and earn their engagement and loyalty from day one. IgniteConnex was designed by bankers for bankers to make your financial institution’s account opening processes as straightforward and user-friendly as possible. Our digital account opening solutions leverage your institution’s legacy systems to ensure a speedy, efficient implementation process.

With IgniteConnex, you can offer your customers a secure, low-friction application process. To learn more, Schedule a Demo with our team today.