Frictionless digital banking at ING
Transforming key customer journeys into personal, easy and smart experiences
Challenge
The onboarding of new clients for banks, also known as know-your-customer or KYC, is a demanding process. A bank is responsible for every transaction through their accounts and that is why they take this very seriously. Especially in the wholesale banking domain where client accounts can have multiple currencies and countries, all with their own rules and regulations. So how do you make seemingly simple journeys like an account opening or an audit letter request a pleasant experience for your customers?
Solution
ING pointed out a number of key journeys that needed to be improved. We set the baseline by founding a fictional company called BikING and by creating personas for their key actors. With the ‘only ask once’ principle in mind, we restructured the process by organising longer processes at the start. We also focussed on understandable input forms with reusable, easy to understand patterns. With this, we could significantly reduce the throughput time of a request.
Approach
By looking at multiple journeys in parallel, you can identify repeating patterns and reusable processes. For example, a legal representative needs to sign off for every request, but the onboarding is a separate process, usually blocking the other journeys to be completed. By giving clear insights in what ingredients you need to ‘bake your cake’, you manage expectations and at the same time prioritize actions.
Test and improve
If you ask a treasurer to test your prototype, you would expect that they would never have time. Funnily the opposite was true in the project. Good account management and short lines with clients resulted in a group of willing test candidates that really helped us to improve the individual and overall processes step by step.