People have drastically changed their expectations for doing business as they’ve adopted an array of digital capabilities over the past decade. Today’s consumer and business buyers want streamlined paths for every interaction and expect digital and mobile experiences to be effortless — no matter the channel or device they’re using.

Effortlessness happens by removing friction from every stage of the customer lifecycle, which in turn requires digital integration among customer-facing channels and back-office processes. This can be especially challenging for high-security industries such as banking, where verifying a person’s identity is crucial to protect personal information and prevent identity fraud.

When banking was done entirely in person, verifying a person’s identity was easier because the customer was right in front of you. But the digitalization of banking has made it harder.

So, in this digital world, how do you create a rigorous identity verification process that’s also effortless from the customer’s point of view?

It all starts by modernizing your customer onboarding process.

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Tech Talk: Accelerate Digital Identity Verification for New Customer Onboarding

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Why You Need to Modernize Your Customer Onboarding Journey

Research shows that on average, opening a new bank account with a digital app can take someone up to 120 new clicks, and sometimes they’re still required to visit a branch to complete the process.

The result is that about 40% of customers who use a mobile app to open a new bank account abandon that effort during onboarding, according to American Banker.

Modernizing onboarding can not only help prevent abandonment, but it can also save you up to 50% in acquisition costs, according to Deloitte, and make your application stickier.

And that includes modernizing digital identity verification processes which t’s an area where making changes can have a big impact.

Tips for Modernizing Onboarding and Identity Verification

Modernizing the digital onboarding process can be complicated. Among other things, banks must securely collect personal information, verify information with a number of systems, enforce user authentication, enable submission of documents, set up notifications and communications, and collect signatures.

But transforming onboarding — and the digital identity verification process within it — doesn’t have to be complicated if you use a low-code platform to build the experience. A modern low-code technology can help you:

  • Integrate best-in-class services. You don’t have to build every component of the onboarding journey yourself if you have the capability to integrate best-in-class services. For example, mobile devices have cameras, which are an easy-to-use, low-friction tool for digital identity and document verification. If you use a modern low-code application development platform, you can easily integrate best-in-class services such as Amazon Rekognition for facial recognition, DocuSign for customer signatures, and Google Maps to show the nearest locations and ATMs.

    The ability to incorporate these third-party services is cost-effective because you don’t have to build and support the services yourself, and the service providers also are motivated to provide a seamless experience through continued innovation.
  • Easily incorporate new popular functions. The universe of digital capabilities is expanding, so you’ll want to have the flexibility to adapt your onboarding journey. For example, three years ago you wouldn’t have seen an Amazon Echo device in the workplace, but now they're common. And in the next year or two, we’ll be seeing a lot more virtual reality in workplaces. Neither of these experiences gives the user a keyboard, so digital identity verification processes would have to adapt to incorporate these new devices and capabilities.

    Adapting to new capabilities is important not only for new customer acquisitions, but also for stickiness throughout the customer journey. Some of the most popular digital features such as mobile check deposit, peer-to-peer payments and cardless ATM withdrawals were invented only a few years ago, and no one can predict what innovations lay ahead. Your application must be flexible and robust to add capabilities to attract new customers over the competition.
  • Accelerate time-to-market. Getting improvements and updates into the field as soon as possible is important to stay ahead of competitors. With a low-code platform you can work about 5X faster than building from code.

    For example, the OutSystems Digital Identity Cloud Verification Accelerator speeds up the experience-building process by providing an easy-to-use drag-and-drop studio, integrations to back-end data, ready-to-go content, and other features that streamline the building process.

See the Acceleration in Action

How do I know that using a modern low-code application development platform can be so powerful? I’ve demonstrated it in action, including showing an onboarding app that one developer built end-to-end in a manner of weeks using OutSystems. Take a look for yourself.

Watch the Tech Talk “Accelerate Digital Identity Verification for New Customer Onboarding.”