The client onboarding process how to provide state-of-the-art support

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1 The client onboarding process how to provide state-of-the-art support Contacts Marc Achhammer PwC, Director Advisory Sandro Ricklin PwC, Assistant Manager Michael Hunkeler PwC Consultant At first glance, client onboarding seems to be a simple and fast process. But apart from high client expectations and tedious internal processes, increasing regulatory requirements such as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) or the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) have also turned it into a highly complex, customised process for every single prospective client. This could lead to banks spending weeks or even months running complex approval processes and having to let the client wait until an initial transaction can be made over the newly opened account. This leads us directly to the question of how customers, and even employees, can be supported during the process to enable a good customer experience on the one hand and efficiency gains within the company on the other. Our clients in the banking industry have pointed out that implementation of a new client onboarding process is just one side of the coin (read our previous blog about client onboarding). The flip side is to come up with a support model that guides customers and employees through all upcoming questions during the onboarding process. Providing a consistent support model is also essential to improve the completeness and accuracy of account documentation. PwC can support you in analysing your current support model, finding the gaps in comparison to best practice solutions, and in implementing an advanced support model into your existing, or new, client onboarding process. In this blog, we will give you some insight into possible support solutions. Interaction between client onboarding process and support model As a baseline, the onboarding process can be split into three phases. During the first phase (prospect), financial institutes gather and evaluate information from potential clients. Once they have collected all the needed information, the process will typically proceed with an assessment of the prospective client and go through an approval/due diligence process (phase II). This will lead to the decision whether an account will be opened or not (phase III). 1

2 Figure 1: Client Onboarding Process and Support Offerings PwC recommends enhancing your onboarding process with a support model consisting of three different levels. This will help you allocate questions of various degrees of complexity to the right level of support. For each level, a service catalogue is established to describe the support available based on service level agreements between support providers and an internal recipient. To create the right incentives, your support model should be able to allocate costs based on a cost-by-cause principle. This ensures all parties involved pay for the costs they cause so minimizing unnecessary requests. In designing a state-of-the-art support model, we need to bear in mind that our society is going through a digital revolution caused by rapid development of electronic devices, such as computers, phones, tablets, etc. This will lead to a change in how customers will interact in the future and how they will expect to be supported. PwC foresees the following four major changes: Shifting expectations Customer are increasingly expecting digital touchpoints to interact, enabling faster responses across different channels. To fulfill these expectations, financial institutions have to provide facilities for interaction 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. For client onboarding this means clients want to start onboarding over various channels and have immediate support over the preferred channel. Channel preferences Most customers prefer to use the channels they have become accustomed to while using other service providers services. As more and more service providers offer online channels, customers of financial institutions will not differentiate between different providers and will expect to find the channels 2

3 they are already familiar with. The complexity of some financial services may mean that an exclusively digital journey is not possible; sometimes a hybrid mix will be needed. Cost pressure Every customer interaction causes costs, even a simple request by phone. However, there are solutions available that automate simple requests using artificial intelligence and robotics, therefore unlocking cost-saving potential. The use of such technologies heavily depends on the bank s specific onboarding process and needs to be assessed carefully. Nevertheless, the implementation of such solutions will lead to a massive reduction in costs if they are used for client onboarding and especially if they are used within the support model. Cross selling is limited A mind shift is necessary to reject the tendency to sell products only instead of fulfilling customer needs by offering customised solutions. Clarifying the needs of a potential client during client onboarding will unlock additional potential for cross selling. A necessary condition for this is that customer contacts are handled holistically and no longer managed in silos. All these changes are influencing todays client onboarding processes and therefore the related support models offered by major financial institutes around the globe. An efficient support model ensures the client onboarding workflow is efficient in terms of time and costs. This is only possible if banks design and implement a combination of different support levels, which address different needs. In some cases, automated support will be enough to cope with all questions. But in reality, there are cases in which onboarding is highly complex due to the number of companies involved or because of special client constructs, such as domiciliary companies. In such cases, a support model needs to be sufficiently flexible to be able to switch between automated and manual support. Let us take a look at three possible levels of support: Manual support offering provided by experts For challenging situations, such as onboarding of complex corporate structures, experts within the bank provide support. Hotlines are a classic entry channel for such services. Such staff might also interact with clients directly and therefore take over all onboarding tasks from relationship managers. These experts participate in regular, sophisticated training to 3

4 ensure they have an exceptional level of expertise even in changing circumstances. Due to the high costs, limited human resources and time related to physical support, this service should be used only if the other two option levels (see below) have been fully exploited and have reached their limits. Hybrid support offering provided by experts and/or systems The client onboarding process should be flexible enough to enable clients to switch between fully automated steps and manual tasks. A good example is the signing of an account-opening contract. The client can sign the contract online but an option lets him print it out if he needs to get additional signatures from other parties (e.g. executive board). After he has collected all the necessary signatures, the workflow is again able to convert the physical document via scanning into a digital one that is archived in the bank s servers. This hybrid process involving digital and physical tasks is very important for many potential clients, i.e. the generation prior to digital natives, but also for highly complex structures. It is important that these switches between different channels are seamless from the client s viewpoint. This means that some actions taken by the client online need to be visible to support staff who are providing offline assistance to avoid additional time-consuming process steps. Automated support offering provided by systems Increased expectations with respect to speed, efficiency and convenience of systems have helped chatbots evolve as a new component of support models. Among other things, chatbots are able to provide a 24-hour service with constant quality and answers to simple questions in real-time. When compared to traditional channels, such as mobile applications or customer support hotlines, chatbots have significant advantages. They provide a personalised, automatic way of interacting with the customer (e.g. online chat) while also saving the customer s time. To summarise, chatbots engage customers in a familiar and intuitive way, advise people in a full 360-degree manner instead of from a single product and silo standpoint, and finally, interact with customers in a new and more frequent manner. Another method that could be used is to provide support directly within the process by helping the user (customer and client) with additional descriptions for each step. Rule engines are also a powerful tool for guiding users with respect to information required or data for each process step. These automated support solutions offer the greatest gains in efficiency and cost. PwC understands your bank has individual needs and that your solution must be a tailored one. A properly set up support model will allow you to save time 4

5 and money, and to enhance customer satisfaction during the client onboarding process. PwC is looking forward to supporting you in finding the right solution. Marc Achhammer PwC, Director Advisory Marc has more than 25 years working and consulting experience, including 15 years of leadership and management experience with leading banks (UBS, CS, ZKB) in Switzerland. Marc specialises in management consulting in core banking business transformation as well as corporate business and digital strategy development. Sandro Ricklin PwC, Assistant Manager Sandro Ricklin is an assistant manager at PwC s consulting division in Switzerland. He has long-term experience in various financial institutions and his focus is on process optimisation and regulatory issues. Sandro holds a Master of Science in Banking and Finance from the University of Applied Sciences Zurich. Michael Hunkeler PwC, Consultant michael.hunkeler@ch.pwc.com Michael is a consultant at PwC s consulting division in Switzerland. He has had many years of experience in multiple financial institutions and his focus is on strategy, process optimisation and client centricity. Michael holds a Master in Business Administration from the University of Zurich. 5