Customers signing up for new accounts and services can feel frustrated by the hoops they have to go through, assembling information and entering it in complicated, sometimes multiple forms, whether on paper or online. What they may not realize is that the process can be just as frustrating for the people working at financial institutions, or other businesses performing underwriting functions.



Too often, technology forces both consumers and businesses to adapt to outdated onboarding processes rather than the other way around. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Penny Townsend, Chief Product Officer at Qualpay, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how the next generation of onboarding and underwriting procedures could bring greater efficiency and effectiveness for everyone involved.





A Siloed Approach to Onboarding



Onboarding is a financial services company’s first opportunity to build a relationship with its customers, so it’s vital to make the process as painless as possible. Yet too many companies still make it cumbersome. For example:



“When people sign up for a bank account, and want a debit or credit card along with the bank account there are multiple applications they have to fill out,” said Townsend. “If I applied for two or three different services, I likely have to fill in secondary and tertiary applications that don't copy over the data already fed into it.”



Financial services companies have long been a siloed environment, but many organizations are realizing that by connecting their onboarding processes, they can also streamline their internal systems. For example, it’s possible to combine for a business, a bank account, credit card processing, and ACH transaction processing into one application that flows seamlessly through underwriting.



The key is to templatize the information and present it in a data-driven, no-code way, creating a unified experience across all financial products. The goal should be to shift the effort of customers bending to how the technology, the vendor and the implementation require data to be input to how can we optimize the experience to reduce repetition and breakdown the silos that existing for different financial products. Creating better customer experience and more transparency and integrity in the data used to manage ongoing risk and compliance.



“My team is out there talking to people about how they actually onboard customers,” said Townsend. “Sometimes if some of the data has to change on the application, a new application has to be sent out, creating friction right at the beginning. Some applications are manually underwritten, which means they take the data set, log into the third-party tools, then verify that the data set matches what was on the application. After they've done the data verification, they'll do the physical underwrite, but they're manually inputting it maybe into two or three different systems for different tracking purposes.



“So if you ask me about how automation helps scale onboarding operations, it's a game changer,” said Townsend. “Move away from the bespoke applications that people have bought in order to solve problems, and start looking more broadly and more holistically. Ask the question, “how can I delight the consumer when they're applying for something?” By making the onboarding experience as efficient, effective, and speedy as possible.”



Bundling the Processes



The implications extend beyond onboarding efficiencies.