Even in the second decade of the 21st century, the digital divide in online account opening remains palpable. According to a report by CEBGlobal, “40% of customers prefer to go online for most banking activities… However, most retail banks find that less than 10% sales happen digitally.”
Consider the case of Jena, one of your banking customers, who wants to apply for a credit card with your bank. She is a millennial and expects immediate responses and interactions from your bank, similar to those delivered to her by Uber & Amazon. However, because your bank is unable to leverage her basic information, which resides in your legacy system, you ask her to fill in a lengthy form with multiple fields.
The cumbersome and unfriendly process discourages Jena and she keeps putting off the task. Finally, when Jena does decide to fill in and submit the form, she finds the user interface unappealing. She also does not find any intuitive assistance or interactive wizards. She is then asked to provide multiple documents, which further discourage her.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if Jena switches to a bank that requires less data entry and offers more personalized and intuitive services.
Online account opening (OAO) should be a seamless experience and every attempt should be made to make it as quick as possible. Although legacy systems add their own value to your processes, their inherent technological limitations can make it difficult for you to cope with data volumes, regulatory changes, and customer expectations.
The worst-case scenario is that this disconnect in online account opening leads to substandard experiences and higher customer abandonment rate.
Since you can neither change nor discard your legacy system, you can deploy an OAO solution that integrates with your legacy system. Such a platform can integrate with both your legacy system and disparate applications and help you deliver a better customer experience.
This platform can provide a digital essence to your online account opening operations, while your legacy platform can continue to provide value. Moreover, tighter integration based on open architecture can help you keep ongoing operating costs low while upholding customer service and complying with regulations.
But how do you do this quickly?
Like we saw in case of Jena, she has multiple banks to choose from, it becomes even more important for you to optimize account opening for speed. An online account opening solution that helps you process cases in a straight-through manner can be your answer. Such a solution relies on the orchestration of workflow, structured data, and unstructured content. It also has integrated business rules and content management capabilities. It can help you stay ahead in the customer acquisition race while making your customers feel like the winner.
Read this whitepaper to learn more about the guiding principles of online account opening.
