Make Way for Digital Account Opening It's becoming clear that online account opening is not just an alternative to branch banking but, has become a priority.

Customers today want to transact digitally. Whether it is banking, shopping or booking flight tickets, digital is what comes to their mind. And, with demonetization on the roll, it has given a great impetus to digital banking.

If you are a bank, your prospects want to transact digitally with you. Millennials and mobile savvy consumers are expecting a great customer experience at every touch point. And, these demanding prospects don't hesitate to jump ship at slight inconvenience. So, for banks, it has created a major thrust to not just meet but exceed their customer expectations.

The Driving Factors for Digital Account Opening

It's becoming clear that online account opening is not just an alternative to branch banking but, has become a priority. Online account opening may seem like a relatively simple process. However, multitude of factors drive it -

• Revenue Growth - The key to revenue growth is new customer acquisition. Since, first impression are the most lasting, a smooth-online customer on-boarding helps you retain your prospects as loyal customers.

• Customer Experience - Today, your customers and prospects do not look for a transactional approach. They need a great customer experience. This requires more than KYC (Know Your Customers), CIP (Customer Identification Program), and the single face to customer. A great customer experience requires that banks develop contextual understanding of prospects to be preemptive and proactive in engaging with them.

• Omni-channel presence - Social and mobility are seen as a vehicle to improve customer reach and as a tool for enhancing customer experience. Well, it is often not about technology but, how these channels are integrated in the process. Ability to seamlessly apply for accounts through any of the available channels that is the key.

• Connecting across channels - One of the biggest obstacles to a great online account opening experience is the broken process, leading to abandonment. A prospect should be able to show interest through social, initiate account application through mobile, capture details with phone camera, complete the application on PC or laptop if convenient, and go back to mobile if needed.

• Unified Platform - It is important to leverage information available in different departments of the organization, in case of cross-sell and up-sell, to serve the customer better. Bankers need to look for connecting people, processes, systems and things in their ecosystem to deliver customer-centric, agile and responsive organization. You need to break the silos and create processes that cut across departments, functions and systems.

• Stringent Regulatory Compliance. Account opening process involves multiple requirements stemming from information security as well as regulatory requirements, such as Customer Information Program (CIP), Identify Verification, and Customer Due Diligence. Banks need to ensure that they comply with all these rules and regulations.

• Process Optimization- Banks need to optimize their processes for taking in more applications, ensuring low abandonment rates, and increasing the rates of overall completion of account opening applications. The process has to address the current gaps and remove silos to ensure that the overall customer experience is seamless from lead-gen to funding.

• Cross-sell opportunities- Digital enables opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell. Your existing customers expect that they are provided with relevant offers based on context available with you. To ensure contextual communication with the customers, you need to integrate technological solutions and also, have processes that allow for it.

Going Digital with BPM

Banks have followed the trends and made efforts to make their account opening more mobile enabled and online-friendly. However, usability and customer experience still needs to be addressed. Banks need to move fast and make their account opening process "truly digital'.

To be 'truly digital', it demands banks to leverage their existing IT capabilities and build scalable solutions for meeting the evolving customer needs. By leveraging mobility capabilities, banks can empower their field force to make decisions and enhance productivity.

Business Process Management (BPM) platform has enabled banks to transform their processes, meet compliance and gain operational efficiencies. BPM also, enables banks to enhance their customer experience and become truly digital. The platform allows for an easy sign up process and its consistent workflow supported across multiple channels offers the ability to save and resume. Further, leverage mobility for real-time information transfer with advanced imaging and auto-extraction capabilities.

To go digital with your account opening, BPM offers capabilities for seamless experience through process orchestration with ability to model, implement, execute, monitor, change and optimize workflows. So, if you are thinking Digital, we say BPM is the card to bet on.