Organizations in all industries are taking a customer-centric approach to their business and banking is no exception. With more and more borrowers seeking online platforms for their banking needs, financial institutions, including lenders, must embark on a digital transformation journey to better understand and cater to their customers’ journeys. Creating an omnichannel experience, embracing payment modernization, and pursuing lending acceleration are three innovative concepts that have potential to elevate the customer experience during the digital lending process.
Customer-Centric Digital Lending is Key
Personalization is key to heightening customer satisfaction in the financial industry. Survey data from Capco reveals that 72% of respondents rated personalization as “highly important” when it comes to financial services. Customers spanning four generations, from millennials to baby boomers, all placed well over the 50% threshold when surveyed on personalization. Perhaps unsurprising, millennials placed the highest value on it, coming in at 79%. This information tells us that a customer-centric approach to digital transformation is key for financial institutions. For digital lending organizations looking to evolve, they must first scrutinize their digital channels and how their customers are experiencing them through digital transformation.
Digital Transformation for Digital Lending
What organizations need to keep in mind when pursuing digital transformation is adopting innovations that address the customer’s priorities rather than internal operations. Omnichannel experiences, payment modernization, and loan acceleration all keep the customer at the center of the efforts.
Omnichannel Experience
For customers to have a satisfactory experience, it’s important that individual touchpoints across different digital channels are cohesive, coming together to form a seamless journey for the borrowers. We call this an omnichannel experience. For that to exist, conversations, interaction history, and customer preferences follow the user, regardless of the platform or where the customer journey starts or ends.
In digital lending, an omnichannel experience is especially critical because of the importance and sensitivity of the customer journey. Applying for a loan is a major decision. Plus, digital loan seekers are entering personal and financial information every step of the way. If their digital lending journey is interrupted when toggling between pages or platforms, stress can ensue from lost time and potentially compromised data. As a result, borrowers might lose trust in your ability to deliver and abandon their efforts altogether—at least with your organization.
Creating an omnichannel experience is beneficial for both the customers and the lending institution. An omnichannel digital lending experience removes silos from the user experience, creating a streamlined process for the customer. And from the agent’s perspective, they have a dynamic view of the client and can jump in at any moment with full knowledge of the client’s journey.
Payment Modernization
Payment modernization is a win-win proposition for both customers and financial institutions. Payment modernization in digital lending refers to transforming digital channels to enable faster payment processing, higher security standards, more flexibility, and smarter business decisions.
When adopted, borrowers will notice significantly higher transaction speeds. Added flexibility will make more payment channels available, creating more convenience. And with the implementation of advanced analytics, digital lending clients will gain more control over their finances.
For banks, they will realize higher customer adoption, satisfaction, and retention rates with payment modernization. Analytics will also unlock more robust insights into customer behavior which will help lenders personalize their journeys. Customers and users alike will observe the benefits of the advanced fraud analytical capabilities of payment modernization.
Lending Acceleration
Time is money and both businesses and consumers require speed. Users expect their digital channels to respond fast so they can manage their cash flow quickly. To keep pace, many lenders are already accelerating their adoption of emerging technologies. And just like that, lending acceleration is underway.
Incorporating automation is a great way to kick off digital lending acceleration. Automation can contribute to speeding up the loan process by removing human errors and replacing them with rapid digital accuracy. Meeting compliances is quick and easy by automating documentation and the loan decision process. Borrowers also get faster approvals with automation. While these customer-centric benefits are paramount, lenders are also motivated to adopt automation because it reduces redundancy, increases output, and boosts ROI.
Advancing the Digital Experience
Traditional banking experiences can no longer be considered the norm as consumers look to digital platforms to fulfill their banking needs. Today, ease and speed seem to dominate expectations. Financial institutions realize the need to move from a lend-centric to a customer-centric mindset to fight not only attrition, but to remain competitive. Digital transformation is getting lenders closer to understanding and meeting borrower’s needs. Innovative concepts like omnichannel platforms, payment modernization, and lending acceleration are the vehicles driving the transformation.
Apexon works across the financial services spectrum to help market leaders and emerging startups leverage digital to deliver new products and services, tailor customer experiences, add new revenue channels, and enhance customer loyalty. If you’re interested in learning how Apexon accelerates innovation in financial services, check out Apexon’s Financial services or get in touch with us directly using the form below.
