Finologee powers Keytrade Bank Luxembourg’s Digital Onboarding
We sat down with Fabien Vrignon, CEO of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg to discuss about the design and implementation of their recent completely digitised onboarding process powered by Finologee, which is enabling their clients to fulfill the account opening questionnaire in less than 10 minutes.
Keytrade Bank Luxembourg is one of the leading online brokers in Luxembourg. Since June 2016, it is part of the Crédit Mutuel Arkéa Group as a subsidiary of Arkéa Direct Bank. Keytrade Bank Luxembourg provides discount online brokerage services to resident and international investors, individual and corporate: it offers real-time access to the world’s most important stock exchanges and supplies financial information and top-notch investment tools designed to enhance overall trading experience.
Keytrade Bank is submitted to the monitoring of the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), and is subjected to Luxembourg’s strict banking and privacy laws.
We are the leading online broker in Belgium and Luxembourg. Yet, our customer onboarding process was still very traditional: it was complicated and was done by filling manual forms and sending them via post or e-mail to us or by visiting one of our offices.
Moreover, we were not onboarding as many customers as we wanted because of the time-consuming onboarding process. The lack of a centralised view of clients was leading us to fallouts: client onboarding request were coming through different channels and involving several e-mails, paper documents, faxes, as well as frequent manual intervention.
On one hand, Finologee understood Keytrade Bank Luxembourg’s main goal, which was to bring new capabilities to market as the bank continues to make progress on digitising its core banking competences, end-to-end. Finologee helped us rethink and redesign the entire client onboarding journey in pursuance of delivering an elevated client experience across our product offerings and network.
Moreover, we wanted a smooth and quick onboarding process as the rest of our business. Digital onboarding would help us exponentially improve conversion and retention rates and reduce our administrative costs of handling customer onboarding manually. Also, we wanted to have a holistic and strategic approach for the entire customer journey. therefore, providing a digital-first approach to our clients was fundamental. The team at Finologee helped us come up with a process that does not entail system-side requirements on the customer’s part. They also enabled rapid, digital and, above all, uncomplicated onboarding for all our customers.
Finally, Finologee’s platform handles the process and workflow on behalf of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg, and it was extremely important for us to outsource to a company that had its setup, processes and documentation in full compliance with the Luxembourg regulation. Outsourcing to Finologee was straightforward as Finologee also operates under a “Support PFS” licence granted by the Luxembourg Minister of Finance.
The solution
We partnered with Finologee in order to provide our customers with a completely digitised onboarding process that enables them to fulfill the questionnaire to open their accounts in as little as 10 minutes. We are the first bank in Luxembourg to implement a fully digital solution. Our customers can now enjoy a frictionless, prompt and paperless account opening experience. The platform includes a web-based interface and a backend core API that assembles user’s data and documents on Finologee’s platform and automatically transmits them to Keytrade’s existing customer management system. Customers can open their account through many devices such as smartphone, desktop computer and tablet.
To meet financial services regulation compliance requirements, a major part of Keytrade’s own risk matrix has been implemented. Customer journeys adapt dynamically using a continuous automated risk assessment feature throughout the process that considers the information given by users and other risk factors. If the risk level is low, only essential documents and data are requested – for higher risk levels, however, users need to provide additional documentation, information and evidence.
Depending on their language preferences and risk levels, users are given the choice between two options: a fully automated process with a guided scan and upload of an ID document validated against a picture of their face (“face match”) in real time, and a video chat session conducted by a human operator validating the ID document.
Customers are required to sign their documents electronically. Signatures are legally binding. We are using Qualified and Advanced Electronic Signatures through LuxTrust devices, which ensure that the most stringent legal requirements are fulfilled. This completely digital onboarding gives us the control of our user experience with a complete access to the application data, making our user journey easily trackable. Finologee’s platform handles the digital part of the full process and workflow on behalf of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg maintaining full compliance with Luxembourg regulations as Finologee operates under a Support PFS licence granted by the Luxembourg Minister of Finance.
The features
Users are guided through the process on a simple and clear interface:
- Choose which type of account to open, e.g. individual, joint, corporate…
- Receive an SMS with a one-time password or unique code to pair smartphone to the bank account
- Fill in the online application form by entering personal details
- Verify the identity and collect the ID document via (2 options):
- Video chat with a video agent, available in multiple languages
- Verify the identity with a live ID document scan, validation and face-match tool
- Provide further information on your financial situation, such as IBAN and tax identification number (TIN), request the upload of a proof of domicile and optionally the origin of funds for clients with higher risk levels
- Accept and sign the terms and conditions via (2 options):
- Perform a SEPA credit transfer from another bank
- LuxTrust electronic signature (mobile application or token) or similar
At the end of the process, Keytrade Bank Luxembourg 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 additional risk is detected) every hour. This data is seamlessly integrated with the bank’s own procedures, CRM/KYC data management system.
3 min DEMO of Keytrade Bank Luxembourg’s onboarding process on the Finologee platform:
Today, we can provide our customers with a rapid, digital and above all uncomplicated onboarding reducing the time spent on onboarding from days to minutes. Clients can now enjoy a refined customer experience with an omnichannel approach and a frictionless communication process. UX is one of the most important criteria when choosing an online bank or broker: that is why we created an intuitive and personalised navigation for our customers. Digital onboarding is also an excellent way for us to avoid unnecessary re-routing to physical channels. Our online identity verification is completely reliable, and we can provide fast access to the account after the onboarding is complete.
If we talk about metrics:
- In three months since the launch of our Digital Onboarding platform we have seen an increase of 60% in the customer conversion rates, by moving from a manual process to a digital one, but still having human validation at the end of the process.
- Before it used to take us more than a week to open an account, today, if the customer starts the process of opening an account and ends it without interruption, he will take around 10 to 20 minutes to provide us the personal data. And, on our side we tipically take less than a day to validate the data and get the account up and running.
- The quality of the data received by the clients has exponentially improved as well thanks to the online application instead of a paper-based one.
We do believe that focusing on customer experience will change how financial institutions engage with their client base. Companies like the “GAFA” or neo-banks have raised consumer expectations to the point that customer experience (CX) has become the main point of competitive differentiation in nearly every sector. CX is particularly critical in a service industry where there isn’t a tangible product; it becomes all about the experience you deliver. We also live in a world where customers are busier than ever, which means it’s essential to eliminate friction across all digital and physical channels throughout the entire customer journey and enable hybrid experiences. Client onboarding is often viewed as a routine process instead of an enormous opportunity to build relationships.
