Interview

Open Banking: accelerating customer onboarding and conversion

Monday 20 February 2023 08:00 CET | Editor: Oana Ifrim | Interview

Open banking infrastructure can be a powerful ally in customer onboarding. TrueLayer’s Group Product Manager, Andre Reina explains how it can be combined with other infrastructure to accelerate KYC-compliant onboarding and improve signup conversion for businesses.


Many businesses in regulated industries have complex and lengthy onboarding processes which customers struggle to complete. What are the main challenges (and risks) those businesses face when they have to onboard new customers? 

In industries like financial services, crypto and iGaming, strict KYC and compliance requirements mean businesses have to collect and verify a lot of information about new customers.

Delivering a slick signup experience in this context is a challenge – and something that even the biggest brands struggle with. I’ve seen big, well-known brands in these industries with signup flows approaching 40 screens.  

The outcome is almost always poor conversion, and wasted marketing dollars. TrueLayer conducted some research with YouGov and found that 4 in 10 who start creating an account online, never complete the process.

YouGov research with 1,274 UK customers of financial services, igaming and cryptocurrency platforms reveals where customers typically abandon signup

We also found that the biggest triggers for a new customer to abandon signup are: asking them to enter information manually (eg their email address, or payment account details when making their first deposit) and making them wait too long to be verified.

These are high friction points which cause high drop off. But there are other challenges too. If a customer has to enter in lots of information manually, it can create problems downstream with data quality, leading to more errors and more work for the customer support team. 

It can also create more opportunity for certain types of fraud, like bonus abuse in the case of iGaming, where bad actors make slight variations in information to create multiple accounts.

 

How can open banking streamline customer onboarding, identity verification, and risk identification for businesses?

Open banking enables businesses in Europe to connect directly to a customer’s bank account via secure APIs, to do one of two things with their customer’s consent: fetch financial data or take a payment.

There are a number of ways this can speed up customer onboarding. Firstly, it minimises manual data input. With an open banking payment, for example, there’s no need to manually key in account numbers or sort codes. Instead, users select their bank from a list, connect securely to their bank, authenticate with biometrics and confirm the payment.

Open banking can also help speed up verification of a new customer’s identity – for example, if you need to verify that they own the bank account they’re signing up with, or you need to assess that they can afford to trade or gamble on your platform, or where their funds come from for AML purposes.

In these cases, open banking can give you that permissioned, direct and secure connection to the source of truth – the customer’s bank. It avoids things like having to ask someone to scan and upload their bank statements, which is both insecure and a pain for customers.

 

How is TrueLayer transforming customer onboarding? Tell us about your new automated onboarding product, Signup+

Open banking as a technology is great, but it also has limitations when it comes to customer onboarding. 

Open banking APIs don’t yet provide all the information about a user that you’ll need to verify them for example. Banks in the UK for instance aren’t compelled to share details like date of birth or address via open banking APIs.

This is where providers like TrueLayer step in. We combine open banking with additional data infrastructure to provide a more holistic onboarding solution. 

Streamline onboarding with a single payment with TrueLayer’s Signup+ solution


This year we launched Signup+. It’s powered by open banking and it speeds up KYC-compliant onboarding with one quick deposit from a user’s online bank – so new customers can get started gaming, trading, or buying crypto right away. 

Signup+ works by pulling bank account data, ie sort code and account number, through open banking and matches it with other bank-sourced identity data (eg user name, address and date of birth). This allows you to auto-populate signup forms, securely authenticate your users and instantly take an initial deposit.

According to research from YouGov and TrueLayer, 1 in 2 new customers are likely to continue using a platform after they’ve made the first deposit


This also helps convert new users into active customers right away by combining the sign-up process with an initial deposit. Our research shows that after an initial payment, customers are much more likely to continue using a platform.

 

Which types of businesses can use the new solution?

Signup+ is for any business that is looking to speed up its onboarding process. It's especially relevant for regulated industries such as online trading, remittance, crypto and iGaming which have complex and lengthy onboarding processes which new customers struggle to complete.

Currently, it’s only available in the UK, but we’ll be rolling out the product to more countries throughout 2023 and 2024. 

 

What do your customers have to say about Signup+? 

'We are thrilled to have the opportunity to use Signup+ at Remitise. 

Traditionally, the onboarding process often involves manual, time-consuming tasks such as gathering and verifying personal information, conducting identity checks and establishing proof of address. By obtaining customer data sourced from their bank, Signup+ streamlines the onboarding process and saves time and resources for our company and our customers. This improves the overall customer experience and increases new user conversion by eliminating the need for them to manually input their personal data.'

Adebayo Familusi, CEO at Remitise

'Signup+ is the perfect solution for businesses looking to improve their user experience and streamline the onboarding process. By shortening the time it takes to onboard a customer, and making deposits and withdrawals simple, Signup+ has the potential to improve signup conversion rates and control the cost per acquisition. At Tiger Brokers, we are committed to providing the best user experience possible, and Signup+ is a great tool that helps us achieve that goal.'

Summer Xu, COO of UK business at Tiger Brokers


About Andre Reina

Andre Reina is Group Product Manager at TrueLayer, the global open banking platform. He leads our data products team, building solutions based on open banking to help businesses create better customer onboarding and verification experiences. Before joining TrueLayer, Andre worked in the iGaming and crypto industries for 6 years, leading teams to build and expand compliance solutions worldwide.

 

About Truelayer

TrueLayer is a global open banking platform that makes it easy for anyone to build better financial experiences. Businesses of every size use TrueLayer to power their payments, access financial data, and onboard customers across the UK, Europe, and Australia. Founded in 2016, TrueLayer is trusted by millions of consumers and businesses around the world. Our vision is to create a financial system that works for everyone.


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Keywords: Open Banking, digital onboarding, compliance, KYC, financial services
Categories: Banking & Fintech
Companies: TrueLayer
Countries: World
This article is part of category

Banking & Fintech

TrueLayer

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