Onboarding is one of the most important steps in the customer journey. How it works often decides whether a deal is closed or not. The simpler and more secure it is, the higher the conversion.
Onboarding processes take a lot of time and resources. To meet these challenges, companies need ways to make onboarding seamless, user-centred, intuitive and accessible, for new and existing customers as well as for new and existing employees.
“Onboarding, Made Easy” is our slogan. But what is behind it, and how does digital onboarding improve the traditional process?
What Is Onboarding?
Before we go into detail, it’s worth looking at the concept itself. Onboarding literally means “taking on board”: bringing new or existing customers or employees into a company.
Digital onboarding is not about integrating someone into a team, but about integrating them into the company’s digital systems. Effective onboarding makes it easier to access services and products, and improves the user experience from the very start. The aim is to make onboarding not only faster and more efficient, but also more secure.
Onboarding plays a different role in the customer journey in every industry and takes place at different points. In HR, the focus is on recording and verifying a person’s identity. In e-commerce, on the other hand, it includes verifying and transferring account information, checking creditworthiness, obtaining proof of identity and setting up a SEPA direct debit mandate.
For financing providers such as mortgage banks or real estate lenders in particular, the process often involves a lot of paperwork and frustration. Sometimes it takes several weeks to reach a financing decision. This takes up a considerable amount of customers’ time and resources, and also places heavy demands on employees, who invest their time in the hope of closing the deal.
Onboarding, Made Easy with Open Banking
What does it mean to onboard customers using open banking? Open banking makes onboarding simpler, faster and more secure. An API can be integrated seamlessly into existing systems such as SAP or directly into a website, enabling efficient customer verification without major IT effort. FINcredible, the first account information service provider in Austria licensed by the Financial Market Authority (FMA) under PSD2, uses open banking to make onboarding more efficient, more secure and more customer-friendly.
One Click, Many Checks
Let’s look at how customers sign up with an energy supplier. Usually, the process starts with an application form asking for personal and sensitive information such as name, address, account number and ID details. This information is used to verify the customer’s identity. Traditionally, a copy of the ID card or passport has to be sent by post. Once it arrives, the energy supplier checks the customer’s identity and, if necessary, their creditworthiness by hand. This process is time-consuming, error-prone and risky, and often leads to a high drop-out rate. On top of that, the company has to pay for postage.
How Does an Onboarding Provider Improve This Process with Open Banking?
Open banking removes many manual steps. The FINcredible Check starts a whole range of verifications with a single click. The customer approves the check in their banking app. Via a secure, fast and automated interface, their identity is then verified in real time and their creditworthiness is assessed immediately, based on up-to-date bank data. This saves a significant amount of time, reduces effort and minimises the potential for errors. The entire process, from entering data to signing the contract, can be completed fully digitally in just a few minutes.
Conclusion
Because it integrates into existing systems, digital onboarding can be optimised not only for energy suppliers but for many other industries. Customers enjoy the simplicity and speed with which they can use services, while companies benefit from higher conversion rates and stronger customer loyalty.
Digital onboarding with FINcredible changes not only the process itself, but the entire customer relationship: less effort, lower costs and a much better user experience. It makes access to services and products simpler, more secure and more transparent.
The goal is clear: Onboarding, Made Easy.
Would you like to learn more about open banking? Then read our article “What Is Open Banking and Why Is It Important?”.
Do you have any questions?
Contact FINcredible at contact@fincredible.at or via our contact form.
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