Planning and optimising digital user journeys
Shifting away from traditional ‘manual’ processes to digitalisation is a significant change for your business. While it is an interesting proposition for many brands, where do you start when it comes to thinking about what your potential user journey will look like? Here, we cover some of the high-level aspects for you to consider that will help you map your user journey:
Make sure you have a case for digitalisation
Digitalisation offers tangible benefits for many regulated firms, but it can be time-consuming to set up, so you must make sure it is the right option for you.
It can make sense to review your business lines, focus and activities to see what would work best: there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You could digitalise certain processes, opt for digital onboarding only, or perhaps decide to digitalise (for instance) KYC or AML client file updates only. The right service provider will be able to cater to your needs with a modular solution that you can tailor to your requirements, so identify what it is that works for your business and context, before going forward.
While digitalisation is the right fit for many regulated firms, it is perfectly possible that keeping your current processes is the best and most logical solution for you and your clients. In this case, our advice typically is to stay with what is working – digitalisation for digitalisation’s sake does not help in most cases.
Think in depth about what your clients need
Ensuring your clients will be happy with digitalised onboarding, AML/KYC file updates and other relevant processes is critical for success. What your clients expect from a digital solution should also be considered – ideally by getting client feedback and insights into what they would like to see from your business. Client expectations are likely to vary extensively, and it is important that you consider what will make most sense to your business, rather than trying to apply a more blanket approach.
For example, for some firms, the need for human interaction is typically low, so digitised KYC and onboarding processes are easier to introduce and are widely appreciated. For other institutions, digitised KYC may be less appropriate if your clients want a more hands-on and personal experience (which may often be the case, for instance, with high-net worth clientele). It could, however, have a role to play for certain types of processes, such as retrieving a digital copy of an ID document, or a routine file update.
Consider internal stakeholders
While customer experience will need to be at the forefront of your planning, internal stakeholders also need to be involved. Identify and liaise with any parties to cover the viability of the project, their needs and what constitutes a successful outcome for all.
Review how other companies set up their digital journeys
In the first instance, simply following and analysing what your competitors and other service providers are doing in terms of digital KYC, AML and onboarding can get you off to a good start. There will be plenty of publicly available information that you can analyse and consider when thinking about what would work – or what will not work – for your own customer journey. Reviewing the competition will also help you shed light on the parts of the user journey you could refine or do differently, potentially giving you a competitive advantage.
The user journey should focus on the needs and expectations of your clients and what they want to see from you – every organisation is likely to have different requirements and what is applicable for a retail bank may not always be appropriate for a private bank, for example.
Next steps: getting more specific
Once you have a grasp of what your clients and internal stakeholders need and what the competition is doing, you can then look more in detail at what you will need from a digitalised process. Here are some examples of questions you can ask to narrow more effectively what your user experience will look like:
- Will you pre-identify and pre-authenticate users?
- Will you use technical risk assessments of user behaviour, or not?
- Which data and information will you need to collect and analyse?
- Will you use identification methods and if so, which ones?
- What kinds of user consent will be necessary?
- How will you automate sanction lists checks?
By then, you should have a fuller idea of what capabilities you will need. You can next create a high-level map of what the user journey will look like. At this point, you will also have a clear understanding of whether it will make sense for you to build a digital platform in-house, or if you will outsource to a technical service provider.
