Opening a bank account via mobile device or desktop is a modern convenience used by many banking customers. Today, banks offer online account-opening solutions that enable their customers to open these accounts quickly, in a secure environment.
Despite these conveniences, many modern solutions suffer from the same revenue-draining problem: massive amounts of customers who abandon the online account-opening process early.
Abandon Ship!
If customers think your online account-opening process takes too long to complete or view it as difficult to use, they will abandon the process. This is a common problem: according to a Javelin Research Study, 90% of customers abandon online account applications before completion. This stat shines light on a major hurdle for banks interested in providing online account opening to their customers.
Offering a Modern Online Account-Opening Solution
So if abandonment is the core problem, what can banks do to address it? While it’s true that online applications, in general, tend to have high abandonment rates, there are steps that banks can take to ensure this rate is minimized.
Here are the five elements your institution can implement to decrease abandonment:
- Provide Channels of Choice: It’s no secret that banking customers have flocked to online and mobile banking platforms. As more tech-hungry Millennials and Gen-Zers enter the consumer market, these digital platforms will only rise in popularity. A successful online account-opening solution must exist in all of these channels, giving consumers the option to open an account on their channel of choice.
- Use a Progress Bar: When making an online purchase, have you ever noticed the bar or icon indicating where you are in the checkout process? Leaders in online shopping and retail have incorporated a progress bar in some form or another, and for good reason: customers appreciate clarity. Though it might seem simple, using a visual icon that shows the customer’s progress through the online application deters abandonment.
- Save & Resume: Many abandoned sessions stem from ordinary, everyday interruptions. Life happens; the doorbell rings, the kids need to be picked up from school, an important phone call comes in … we’ve all been there. When these interruptions occur, your customers should be able to pause the application, then jump right back where they left off in the process, without having to start over.
- Mobile Responsiveness: It’s likely that many of your customers who elect to use an online account-opening application will use a smartphone. Optimize your solution for smartphone use to ensure these customers are given the same experience as a desktop or tablet.
- Built-in Compliance and Security: Account-opening regulations are complex, but the basics fall into two categories: knowing who your customers are, and protecting their sensitive data. Here are some features that a modern online account-opening solution should possess to maintain an appropriate level of compliance:
- Scanning/validating driver’s license photo
- Limiting fraud by email verification
- Using customer security questions to authenticate the user
Implementing an online account-opening solution that is easy and fast is a challenge. However, if that challenge is met, your institution will provide a greater customer experience, which is at the core of a modern banking strategy.
Laura Ryan is product manager for NuFund®, CSI’s online account-opening solution. She holds more than 30 years’ experience in the financial technology industry.