10 Things Every Banking Platform Should Include
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- 5 min reading
Here are the 10 things that banking platforms should incorporate to ensure best quality experience for clients, and to be the tool aiding in bank’s development.
1. Fundamentals provided
The digital platform must first of all fulfill the basic task of providing financial products and services to its users. It must ensure the possibility of insight into the current status and freedom in use, i.e. submitting instructions and requests.
2. Client-communication tools
Remote channels are progressively replacing traditional, nondigital forms of customer service. However, in the financial sector, clients still prefer direct, personal contact with their account manager, especially in B2B services. Engagement banking platform should provide efficient means of communication, such as instant chat messaging, voice/video calls, and digitally secured correspondence including binding signatures.
3. Active sales support
According to Kearney’s 2021 “European Retail Banking Radar,” more than half of the clients prefer using remote channels. This means that traditional (not to even mention on-premise) banking is no longer the main channel of contact with the client. It’s necessary to provide clients with efficient self-management, at the same time remembering about relation-improvement and personalized offerings. The platform must offer end-to-end online sales processing.
4. Customer loyalty tool
Through digital environment, banks and other financial institutions are provided with a wide range of customer data. Using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence , they are able to learn their clients’ habits and preferences, which can be used to personalize offerings and influence client loyalty. This can result in relations becoming partnerships, bringing new opportunities for the clients.
5. Risk mitigation for the banks
Collecting customer data from various sources is a goldmine of unique client information that, when used appropriately, can improve relationship with the client, increase sales and profitability, while reducing the risk of such relations. Proper analysis on the accounts, ERP systems, external databases and registers allows to build an early warning system and react in advance to ward off potentially dire situations.
6. Data/document exchange tools
A highly formalized financial market, subject to many legal acts and guidelines, as well as supervised by regulators, is both safe and trusted by the public. Building and offering service solutions to customers, one must ensure the security of processing and exchange of sensitive information. The platform should enable remote document exchange between the parties and ensure their originality and invariability, as well as authentication and digital signature.
7. Scaling, expansion, openness
Technology is often an obstacle in a way of dynamically changing market and user preferences. The platform needs to be flexible enough so that it’s possible to implement vital changes fast and in an independent way. API-first approach and and architecture based on microservices are the way to make the platform open and ready to implement solutions from various sources, including outside vendors, partners, or fintechs including cloud services
8. Universal base
One of the most important things is versatility of the banking platform. Due to its technological character, it needs to be as versatile as possible, to achieve the greatest possible synergy and cost optimization. The platform should be a universal base that can fit all types of banking – including business banking, lending or retail – as well as wealth management and insurance services.
9. Flawless UX/UI
The one thing to consider designing an engagement banking platform, is its user-friendliness. It has to be intuitive, easy to use, and provide flawless user experience to both users and back-office staff. This comes not only to a user-friendly interface, but UX as a whole, including automated processes and their simplification by background activities. The experience must encourage users to frequently come back.
10. Multi-device availability
Last but not least, one has to remember about omni- and optichannel principles. The solution needs to be available via different channels, accordingly to the character of the offering. It is crucial that a given channel and its information architecture is adapted to a given function in the system in an optimal way. And so, for example, advanced authorization management doesn’t has to be available via mobile channels, as opposed to quick peer-to-peer fund transfer.
Author: Grzegorz Urbański - Product Manager at Comarch Open Platform
