Onfido Pushes Traditional Banks to Offer Better Digital Banking Services

Onfido has some handy advice for banks looking to move forward with their digital transformations. The company noted that COVID-19 has dramatically increased the demand for digital banking services, and financial institutions that fail to adapt will lose ground to those that do a better job of meeting customer expectations. For instance, Onfido’s research shows that 44 percent of US consumers will abandon an onboarding process that has too much friction.

With that in mind, Onfido suggests that traditional banks should prioritize the digital experience rather than branch services, which can account for 20-30 percent of a bank’s operational expenses. However, that money is not being well spent in an environment that favors remote interactions. Conventional banks’ share of the global banking and payments industry has dropped from 81 percent to 72 percent in the past year alone, and they will continue to lose customers if they do not find a way to connect with users online.

Contactless technologies will be an important part of that transition. Mobile banking traffic jumped 85 percent in the US in April of 2020, and online registrations went up 200 percent in that same time period. That rise has coincided with a surge in online shopping, and an increase in the total number of cashless card transactions. Banks need to support those kinds of payment options, since surveys have shown that 95 percent of consumers plan to continue using them once the pandemic has subsided.

Finally, Onfido argues that banks cannot afford to focus on single touchpoints, and must instead work to deliver a complete customer experience that covers the entire journey from onboarding through to sales and other services. In doing so, they should listen to customer demands and deliver digital banking services across multiple channels.

For its part, Onfido positions its own identity verification technology as an essential component of that customer journey. The company’s solution uses document and facial recognition to confirm the authenticity of an ID and the person holding it, and does so while mitigating risk and remaining compliant with the latest Know Your Customer regulations. The automated platform is also much faster and more cost-efficient than human review.

Onfido recently provided biometric onboarding technology for the FundOf content creation platform, and for MANGOPAY’s e-wallet system.

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February 1, 2021 – by Eric Weiss