New ABBYY Survey Reveals Financial Institutions are Letting Customers Down, Despite Internal Satisfaction and Investments

ABBYY, a global Digital Intelligence company, recently conducted a Digital Strategies in Financial Services survey of over U.S. 100 executives representing senior decision makers, including chief experience officers, vice presidents, and directors, that revealed a concerning disconnect when it comes to banks’ onboarding processes, technology investments, and customer satisfaction.

The survey found that even though customer onboarding is one of the most challenging aspects for banks, it’s only noted as their third most important priority. The survey also shows that 48% of executives say they want to accelerate onboarding and 33% want to improve it, yet it ranks low on their list – showing a strong disconnect between the data and executives’ beliefs about onboarding challenges.

Additionally, executive management is not investing in the right innovative technology that can help with these challenges, which is ultimately causing this disconnect: less than half of respondents say they use artificial intelligence (AI), only two-thirds use robotic process automation (RPA), and only 10% use process intelligence technology. And while 50% say their automation investments are paying off, more than one-third don’t have the visibility needed to make informed, intelligent decisions about automation investment ROI.

When asked what aspects of customer onboarding challenge their people, processes, and systems, 40% of respondents said that their biggest headache were challenges related to ID validation and verification, and 38% named lack of visibility. Furthermore, 40% admitted that they struggle with the same aspect and 25% said they need to improve their capabilities for this. Financial institutions must make smarter investment decisions when it comes to the latest technologies in order to address this challenge.

For example, banks can find a better way of completing ID validation and verification through AI and proof of identify technology. Proof of identity can quickly extract data from ID documents (driver’s licenses, passports, state/county IDs, etc.), proof of or supporting documents (utility bill, birth certificate, etc.), verify the document, and verify the person applying matches the ID through biometrics – easily validating that someone is who they say they are. It uses components including advanced mobile capture technology, classification, MRZ (Machine Readable Zone) reading, data extraction, and form prefill for ID reading, along with ensuring the ID is authentic and unaltered in the verification process, and ensuring the applicant is the owner of the ID through facial recognition, liveness detection, and comparison to the ID headshot.

Furthermore, financial institutions’ day-to-day operational processes may become unnecessarily complex, adding time and cost to routine tasks and impeding the delivery of responsive customer service. Intelligent customer onboarding automation using process intelligence can help enhance compliance, speed up processing, and improve customer satisfaction.

• Though 43% of respondents claim onboarding a customer can be accomplished within days, 31% say it takes them more than a week – and sometimes, sadly, it can even take months.
• Relatively few respondents (15%) are highly satisfied with how long it takes to onboard customers. And even though customer onboarding is a challenge and can cause frustrations for customers, 35% are still somewhat satisfied with this.
• When asked what their top three priorities and goals are for the next 12 months:

• 73% said improving customer relations
• 51% said reducing operating costs
• 39% said streamlining onboarding and account opening

ABBYY’s Digital Strategies in Financial Services survey was performed by Gatepoint Research between May and August 2021 by over 100 executives. Download the full report for more detailed information.