Travel Seamlessly through Client On-boarding

A great client onboarding experience is more important than ever before and financial institutions can no longer afford to get it wrong. With the banking industry in the middle of a wholesale transformation process and new competition emerging from the most unlikely sources on almost a daily basis, retaining, and attracting new customers is crucial to continuing business growth and development.

Quality data is the fuel which powers the jets and it is an absolute imperative to not only be compliant but to be sure you are providing your customers with the best possible client engagement experience throughout every stage of your relationship. Client onboarding is not just a ‘once-in-a-lifetime trip’, it needs periodic reviews to ensure banks continue to offer relevant and valuable services to their precious client base. Customer needs are fairly straightforward. They want to be on-boarded quickly and efficiently; they want to trust and develop a relationship with their financial services provider, whoever they may be, and they want the lowest cost for the best service. Simple, I hear you say, not quite! The harsh reality is that if the customers don’t feel valued, they will simply go elsewhere. And with new regulations such as PSD2, it has never been easier for a customer to move from one provider to another.

The banking environment is becoming more consumer-focussed every day and there is a lot to be learned from the travel industry. Not only in the way that customers have the power to source the cheapest, more tailored packages which best suit their needs, but also in the way they manage the customer experience from start to finish. I’m not saying it’s perfect, because unfortunately for most of us getting a family and children packed and on board an aeroplane is still a challenge. But, progress is being made, and despite the continued risks which border control and flight operators have to manage, they are still constantly pushing forward to make the customer experience as seamless as possible. And that is exactly how Client Onboarding from the clients perspective should be seamless.

For financial institutions, it should be an end-to-end client on-boarding process which achieves a single source of clean consolidated data. The data model must be flexible and the rules engine needs to have the capacity to be configured as and when required. Client Lifecycle Management touches back, front and middle office these attributes are crucial for not only compliance but in order to be able to reap the benefits from the data.

So, with greater competition, empowered customers together with the never-ending deluge of increasingly stringent regulations raining down on all financial services providers, they now have lots to contend with in order to survive and prosper in the new age of banking. Data is the game-changer.