You know your products and services are first-rate, and your sales and marketing teams have done an excellent job communicating the value you bring to customers.
But somewhere between marketing and the actual servicing of products lies a crucial area for financial services—or any business for that matter: The customer onboarding process.
Today, it’s more important than ever, especially in banking, to provide a seamless onboarding experience to improve conversion rates and provide that all-important first impression to your customers.
Gone are the days of advertising CD rates and checking account terms on placards in branch offices with take-it-or-leave-it offers, hoping customers start filling out forms.
Today, customers can explore and purchase what you offer more easily than ever via smartphones, tablets or computers, but they can also abandon you just as easily as well.
That’s where a superior digital onboarding solution makes all the difference.
At a recent webinar hosted by Temenos and RCG Global Services, Heather DeStefano, SVP of Digital Innovation at MidWestOne Bank, shared how the financial institution leveraged Journey Manager, Temenos’ flagship digital onboarding platform to improve client experiences and create a win-win scenario for all.
Like many financial institutions, MidWestOne was a competitive bank seeking not just to compete but thrive in a rapidly evolving industry. Although the bank had an existing onboarding solution, it just wasn’t enough to make the process seamless for both employees and customers.
The existing system, while technically ‘digital’, was clunky. Customers could submit loan applications online, but the requests went to a service center where employees manually entered data into various systems and sent documents back and forth for signatures. The system didn’t integrate with the bank’s core, making it a far cry from a true digital account-opening experience. “It was a very messy process,” DeStefano said.
Opening an account took more than 10 minutes—far longer than the desired two minutes or less—and customization options were limited. In short, they just didn’t cut it. They also cut into the effectiveness of other areas of the business.
If onboarding is not effective, then the marketing is a wasted investment, and servicing becomes wishful thinking because you don’t get customers to service.” DeStefano said.
MidWestOne needed an end-to-end onboarding solution that provided best-in-class customer experiences. It had to be fast, frictionless, and future proof, integrating with fintech partners and scaling as new technologies emerged. Additionally, the solution had to support both retail and business accounts and offer seamless cross-channel experiences—from online to in-branch.
With that firmly in mind, MidWestOne selected Temenos Journey Manager as its onboarding and account-opening platform, appreciating its flexibility and customizability.
The results have been noteworthy. Customers today can open accounts for savings and deposit products in under two minutes, navigating through fewer than 10 screens. The completion rate stands around 63%, significantly above the industry average of around 50%. Of those who completed the application, 98% did so in a single attempt, with only 2% requiring additional inputs for more specialized products.
A New Approach: Fast, Frictionless, and Future-Proof
The financial institution was drawn to the Temenos Journey Manager’s extensibility and its ability to customize and the flexibility it gave the bank to build on existing and new resources.
We wanted something that would not only work for retail depository accounts, which was our main focus when we launched, but also extend to business accounts,” DeStefano said. “We didn’t want the solution to only work online, we wanted the opportunity to be able to extend it as our in-branch solution as well, so our customers can go back and forth between channels if they need to.”
The benefits of implementing the Temenos digital onboarding platform
For MidWestOne, creating a new digital account-opening experience wasn’t only about improving that front-end experience for customers, it was about changing operations to benefit the bank, its customers and all stakeholders.
Data-driven improvements bolstered efficiency as well.
Behavioral analytics and other tools, for example, now track customer behavior throughout MidWestOne’s onboarding journey, identifying where prospects drop off while flagging other issues encountered along the way.
Most banks don’t customize, but MidWestOne didn’t want to be everyone else,” DeStefano said, stressing that the financial institution, its employees, partners and its customers are better off as a result and the collaboration along the way.
“It has created so many efficiencies along the way and made for a better product,” DeStefano said. “We want to build relationships, but we want to be really easy to bank with. We’re small enough to know you, but we’re big enough to offer you the solutions of larger institutions. That’s our sweet spot.”
Also at the webinar, Temenos’s Chris Howell, VP Business Solutions Group, described Journey Manager in detail, highlighting the benefits it brings as a system of engagement with the bank’s core and other systems.
Howell broke down Temenos Journey Manager’s functional modules a financial institution would use to create an optimal onboarding experience. Those include a module for CX journey design, another for third-party fintech integration, one for engagement servers, one for staff workspaces and another for journey analytics.
Journey Manager provides a platform offering with all these modules to allow a bank to differentiate in the digital channel,” Howell said.
To watch the on-demand webinar, please click here