Digital onboarding is something that many companies have had to adapt to over the last couple of months. But even prior to lockdown it was clear that clients are increasingly interacting with financial institutions digitally, through the use of apps and internet banking for example. Lockdown has now amplified this and forced us to do more digitally which is a positive thing.
Good digital onboarding is not about moving everything to digital and forgetting the face to face experience – it means leveraging data to better understand how your customers want to receive information and what channels work best for them for onboarding and then adapting the process accordingly. Clients want a great user experience and the ability to be onboarded quickly.
At times the onboarding and due diligence requirements of certain providers can seem cumbersome. This is in part due to regulatory requirements but also due to legacy processes and systems that some finance institutions operate with. Regulatory requirements are constantly changing and are non-negotiable, so to make life easier for our clients we need to make the process easier and as efficient as possible.
Digital Onboarding – Case Study
Since we have been in lockdown we have digitally onboarded a number of new clients. Whilst our regulatory requirements have meant that we have to obtain certified copies of ID and address verification documents for our clients, we have managed to do everything else digitally.
This has included providing and receiving documents and information digitally, video calls via Microsoft Teams and Zoom with our clients, regular calls between our new business team, compliance team and directors to discuss new business and cover off internal sign off points. We have also used digital signatures to sign off new business forms and we have hosted virtual risk committee meetings to discuss and agree the take on of new business.
The digital onboarding process has been very efficient and we will continue to use many aspects of it when we return to the office after lockdown, we will also continue to look at ways we can improve our new client onboarding process to make it as easy and efficient as possible.
