Digital KYC: Power seamless user journeys with Finologee

In the financial services industry, the general availability of digital communication channels combined with the arrival of a new generation of players (FinTechs) has accelerated the digitisation of many traditional processes as providers in this field leverage technology to deliver bold and efficient new digital services to consumers and businesses. Nowadays, customers have continuously growing expectations from their financial institutions (e.g. banks, insurance companies…) to obtain a high level of personalised services and to be on par with. Improving the customer onboarding experience has become a priority in financial institutions, especially as new regulations such as PSD2 enable customers to change their financial services provider more easily. These factors combined drive customers to be less loyal to their current suppliers and underline the importance of re-designing traditional processes in a consumer-centric way

Modern consumers demand everything at a push of a button and traditional financial industry players must make the shift to a digital-first approach to assure long-term loyalty from their clients. Customers’ behavior is evolving, they are strongly reducing face-to-face interactions for their financial activities and look for institutions that can provide them with an easy access and personalised experience. Therefore, there is a profound need to rethink the whole client onboarding process as it constitutes the first customer interaction for the institution and will set the tone for the entire relationship.  A smooth and truly omni-channel customer experience can be a game changer for the financial industry players, not to mention it has the potential to save significant costs to the organisation and to become a major competitive advantage.

Whilst some institutions are already offering online services, customers are often re-routed to a local branch or different channels due to unaddressed digital constraints. Even though every customer’s onboarding journey is different and needs to be compliant with financial services regulation, some common friction points need to be tackled and the account setup should now be just a formality and should therefore be completed in a few minutes, similarly to other online platforms, such as Airbnb, Amazon or Uber.

It is not just about disruptive technologies as some may think, it goes far beyond than that. The financial services industry understands technology very well, banks and other players have been dealing with it for decades. However, digital transformation is not just about technology: it is about the culture and organisation to embrace technology. It is a mindset change.

New market entrants, FinTechs, can really help financial industry players ride the wave of this mindset change by successfully enabling them to build seamless digital infrastructures. A FinTech can most definitely help financial organisations re-think and improve their traditional onboarding process by helping them design a comprehensive user journey with an intuitive user experience to quickly navigate through user interfaces and execute actions. They can also provide valuable insights, custom integrations and seamless support.

Unlike existing solutions, Finologee’s outsourced KYC onboarding process does not entail system-side requirements on the customer’s part: we are enabling rapid, digital and, above all, uncomplicated onboarding for all customers. Our goal is thereby raising the bar and creating the basis for establishing a market standard for the KYC process. We not only provide our clients with great technology and user experience, but we also provide an extensive knowledge in compliance and we make sure all our infrastructure and processes are fully Luxembourg regulation-compliant.

Re-designing existing onboarding processes is complex. It involves many processes, providers and systems to build an easy and straightforward solution. The complexity relentlessly increases due to customers’ high expectation of top-notch user experience (UX) and their demand for omni-channel use. Finologee can assist with both end-to-end and standalone solutions with its customer-centric approach from the design to the implementation phase to help the financial institution achieve its goals.

Finologee’s full onboarding user journeys typically start on the financial institution’s web site. A simple click on a button redirects users wanting to open an account. Depending on the institution’s requirements, Finologee can handle end-to-end onboarding processes with all the forms and questions, phone and email validation tools, documents upload functions, either a video chat and/or an automated document scan and recognition module, an e-signature/consent component and various other features. Alternatively, we can also provide features or modules covering only specific segments of the onboarding journey.

3 min DEMO of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg’s
onboarding process on the Finologee platform

The process can include a pre-screening step assessing the general level of risk based on several criteria. Journeys can be adapted dynamically using these variables, based on the financial institution’s own risk policies and matrix: ‘low risk’-level users need to provide less data and documents than ‘medium risk’ or ‘high risk’ users. As an alternative to custom scenarios based on risk-levels, our system can also let users choose which features they prefer. For instance, the financial institution may let users select if they want to go through a video chat session with a human operator or if they prefer an automated document scan process (typically requiring an additional identity validation step such as an incoming bank transfer from an EU-bank).

Implementations with our clients are usually white-labelled: users will get a consistent experience displaying client’s corporate identity and implementing their design guidelines on every screen. To put it in a nutshell, our usual full onboarding process takes less than 10 minutes, including ID verification and anti-impersonation performed via live video chat or real-time ID document scan.

Users are guided through the process on a simple and clear, white-labelled and fully customisable interface:

At the end of the process, the financial institution receives the full documentation containing forms and data, a signed PDF contract, copies of ID and other documents and all relevant data to proceed to the account opening validation (if no risk is detected). This data can be seamlessly integrated with the institutions own procedures, CRM or KYC data management system.