How Have the Preferences of Financial Services Clients Changed in the Past Few Years, in Terms of How They Prefer to Interact With Their Banks?

Leena Iyar, Chief Brand Officer, Moxo

A decade ago, the only option clients had to interact with a bank teller or representative was to visit a physical branch. Over the last few years, phone and email have offered improvements to the customer experience, especially for clients who don’t want to be on hold with representatives on the phone or search through their email to find information from their bank. As more banks increase their digital offerings, consumer expectations are evolving to take advantage of this convenience.

Today, more clients have a digital-first preference when it comes to interacting with financial services businesses. In recent data from Moxo, 47% of finance clients receive their services completely remotely, with an additional 22% receiving their services by a mix of remote and in-person interactions. With technology at every individuals’ fingertips, clients desire an on-demand service from their businesses, whether that takes place from the comfort of their home or while they are on the move.

How is automation helping to improve the performance of businesses in the banking and financial services industries?

Automation in the financial services industry is helping to reallocate resources and bring more value where it is needed in these businesses. With representatives juggling many tasks and their time spread thin, the automation of business processes can help free up human capital, which is critical to providing quality service in the banking and financial services industries. By automating repetitive tasks that require minimal human intervention, this frees up time for employees to perform more complex requests. With customizable automated workflows, organizations can streamline the entire client lifecycle and maximize efficiency. The automation of certain financial processes makes it easier not only for employees to track and manage client relationships, but also to measure the progress of their business.

What must financial services organizations consider when automating business processes, to ensure that human touch and personalization is not lost?

Financial services organizations have to strike the right balance of automation and personalization as they begin the process of automating their business processes. With finance and banking being high-touch industries, clients require frequent human touchpoints in order to maintain a quality customer experience. However, it’s important for financial businesses to carefully consider how they are leveraging automation to accentuate personalization in touchpoints with clients, rather than to eliminate it altogether.

The key to preserving the human aspect of financial business is to only streamline the routine processes that can increase efficiency. For more complex ad-hoc requests, it’s important that employees are available to engage and provide a personalized interaction catered to the specific client. With customizable automated tasks to streamline the client experience, implementation of exception handling escalates service to human interaction as necessary. Financial services organizations can determine the best opportunities to leverage automation of routine processes, while also maintaining personalized touchpoints, in order to ensure that human touch is not lost in the servicing of clients.

What technological solutions would you suggest for financial organizations looking to leverage automation to accentuate personalization in touchpoints with their clients, rather than eliminate it?

A digital client interaction hub can help support the entire client lifecycle while automating financial processes. Many banks initiated their digital transformation journey by implementing several new solutions at a time, which supported the transition to virtually servicing clients. When businesses choose to leverage multiple digital offerings, simple workflows become complicated and this leads to more chances for miscommunication and the loss of data stored across these channels to occur. Today’s clients no longer want to be burdened with multiple, disparate channels of communication.

Businesses should look toward implementing a digital hub that incorporates customizable workflows to manage the end to end processes spanning the entire client engagement. Ultimately, by having access to all this information and communications in a one-stop client interaction hub, financial organizations can help streamline the processes in the management of their clients.

What are some specific business processes that can be automated in the banking and financial services industries?

In the onboarding phase, where due diligence is required for Know Your Customer standards to review sensitive client information and monitor client risk, automation can ensure compliance and reduce the likelihood of errors resulting from manual entry. Especially in onboarding where multiple representatives are touching the interaction, automation of these processes can help ensure accuracy of information and compliance with standards.

Aspects of the lending process from start to finish can also be automated, so long as representatives are available to support ad-hoc client requests. Banks can automate the sending of configurable loan applications, as well as the processing and verification of forms. In the underwriting and risk evaluation process, while loan officers should manually review and approve loans, AI can support lenders in evaluating risk and making the most accurate assessment possible. In terms of loan servicing, the automatic digitization of statements, interactions tracking, schedule management, payment reminders and loan reporting can all free up time for finance representatives.

As mentioned, only repetitive processes requiring minimal human intervention should be automated. Leveraging automation in the financial and banking industry not only frees up employees to focus their efforts elsewhere, but it can also contribute to mitigation of risk in manual processes due to the high regulations of the industries. By striking the proper balance of automation and individualized service, financial institutions can provide timely service while ensuring high-quality interactions that fulfill client needs.