FinTech and APIs are unlocking next generation client onboarding for corporate clients
20 April 2021
The future success of banking depends on the value the industry attributes to its customer relationships and this starts with client onboarding. Slow and cumbersome due diligence, lack of quality credit data and long and manual underwriting processes cause many SMEs to get frustrated and abandon the process; not surprising when lending decisions can take up to 100 days or more. This has been exacerbated by COVID-19 with SMEs needing to access funding via schemes such as the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS).
Onboarding is a nuanced and complex process, involving multiple teams. This, combined with a legacy siloed infrastructure, creates a number of issues:
- Lengthy negotiations, excessive onboarding times and a sharp rise in onboarding costs
- Undesirable delays and long time-to-cash cycles
- Piecemeal requests for stringent documentation
- Paper-based, inefficient processes
- Lack of transparency and mature client relationship management (CRM) across channels
So, how can banks move on and maintain competitiveness?
With low net interest margins, banks need to streamline the onboarding processes and automate as much as possible. Building new capabilities based on modern technologies that utilise relevant APIs and FinTechs will improve access to SME data, reduce client onboarding friction and costs while improving the quality of credit decisioning. Key areas of focus should be:
- an intuitive platform giving customers a frictionless onboarding experience, that enables all teams involved in the process to know where the customer is in their journey, and see the status of the application and credit decisioning process;
- a plug-and-play platform that enables combined identity and fraud checks via flexible APIs, allowing a seamless experience that keeps the customer in the digital journey whilst utilising multiple sources to verify identity and complete fraud checks;
- self service and straight through processing utilising biometric facial recognition technology that enable organisations to verify identities, delivering an enhanced KYC onboarding experience.
- Enhanced data access via open banking and account integration (to SME Accounting data sets), increases the quality and speed data can be accessed and processed to support credit decisioning processes.
- electronically enabled account opening and contracting - including identification, providing account and personal details, and receiving and signing the documents - via workflows that limit the need for back-and-forth interactions with the customer;
- real time or packaged sets of checks that enhance the customer experience – for example by instantly retrieving company incorporation documents from official registries through APIs and asking the customer to confirm the details included in;
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies that can be integrated into the onboarding systems to extract information from company documents or passports;
- automated credit risk profiling which reduces the level of manual research needed, consequently reducing the onboarding lead time for the customer.
This architecture is based on an omni-channel customer experience platform with an integrated CRM and customer outreach capability. It gives a 360o view of the customer to operations, risk and marketing teams. Behind this customer platform is an orchestration and integration platform where Fintech and Business APIs are integrated to enable access to the digital functionality and data sets needed across these digital customer journeys.
PwC have seen firsthand the difference a more digital approach to onboarding can make for clients, through our new digital banking platform - TYSL. TYSL is transforming the client onboarding journey across savings, mortgages and corporate lending via advanced CRM, KYC and onboarding practices using the approach outlined above.
To see this working in practice and explore how digital onboarding could work for you, read more and book a demo.
