Online Account Opening Can Be A Growth Engine For Your Digital Branch

As branch visits decline, online account opening (OAO) has become increasingly important to a financial institution's (FI's) future growth. Today's account holders are more likely to bring their deposits to FIs offering online and mobile enrollment and accessibility. However, many FIs have discovered their OAO processes are clunky, difficult to understand, and can lead to a frustrating experience for potential account holders.

FIs understand the revenue potential OAO holds. However, many FIs tend to rush OAO product development in order to gain a faster competitive advantage, without ever truly offering the right solution. In doing so, these FIs lose prospects before a new relationship with all its revenue potential can be established.

Think about the user experience

Q2 believes the user experience (UX) is paramount to successful OAO enrollment. While others embarking on OAO initiatives forego extensive usability research and testing, a premium should be placed on these facets of product development. Stakeholder interviews with repeated testing, surveying, and tweaking are required.

A few tips to help your OAO development efforts

Here are three important tips to consider when beginning OAO product development:

• Create a highly intuitive, mobile-optimized applicant experience that addresses current and future device usage trends. Effective OAO designers understand their audience.
• Provide direct integration into a digital banking platform. The more seamless the enrollment process with a banking platform, the better the overall experience will be for the user.
• Find innovative, easy ways to automate information collection that don't rely on manual input. For example, consider using mobile capture to pull a customers' information from their driver's licenses.