Signicat, the Trusted Digital Identity™ company, today revealed new analysis by P.A.ID Strategies that shows financial institutions are wasting at least €5.7 billion every year due to poor customer onboarding and abandonment.  

The analysis follows the release of Signicat’s regular report into the state of financial services onboarding, The Battle to Onboard 2020. This year’s report was the worst for the industry since it debuted in 2016, with 63% of consumers in Europe abandoning financial applications in the past year. This is a sharp increase of 23 percentage points from the abandonment rate in 2019.  

To understand the financial implications of such a high abandonment rate on institutions’ cost of acquisition, Signicat commissioned specialist research firm P.A.ID Strategies to build a model using primary data from European banks and the abandonment rate uncovered by the Battle to Onboard survey.  

According to the model, around 120 million new accounts will be opened across Europe this year. Signicat’s Battle to Onboard research shows that 63% of people abandon an application. By making conservative estimates of the cost of customer acquisition including advertising, sponsorship and promotion, personnel wages, and customer support—and allowing for multiple applications by the same person, P.A.ID Strategies conservatively estimates that at least €5.7 billion is wasted each year.  

“Customer acquisition is a hot button issue right now—some new banks are especially keen to reference their figures to prove to the market how well they are doing,” said John Devlin, founder, P.A.ID Strategies. “But much of that spend is wasted. Consumers will simply abandon processes that they see as too challenging, problematic or intrusive. Without dealing with this last hurdle in customer acquisition, the financial services market is squandering billions every year.” 

“As a result of the pandemic, onboarding customers digitally, securely and seamlessly is vital for organizations to continue doing business,” said Asger Hattel, CEO, Signicat. “Billions are spent on clever marketing and compelling products every year by the smartest people in the business—and it works, with millions of potential customers starting applications for financial products. Yet it is vital that the industry takes note of where they can improve the onboarding experience, in order to turn these applicants into actual customers.” 
 
For fully digital customer onboarding in the financial services industry, the following steps are usually required: identity verification, validation of identity information (such as screening against sanctions lists to comply with KYC and AML regulations) and electronic signing for terms and agreements or contracts. Digital onboarding is possible in all European countries also in the regulated industries by leveraging verified digital identities – also known as eIDs – or solutions that combine biometrics – selfies or video interviews – with reading of physical ID documents. This can be combined with legally-binding electronic signing, meaning there is no need to print and scan or send any documents, or visit a branch to open the account. Banks that provide onboarding in a single workflow enjoy higher conversions and better return for their marketing investment.  

The report The Battle to On-Board 2020: The impact of Covid-19 and beyond is available for download here: http://signic.at/btobpr

Methodology

Commissioned by Signicat, the Battle to Onboard survey was conducted by Sapio Research in 2020 and consisted of an online questionnaire completed by 4500 adults with a bank account, credit card and an insurance policy—1,000 in the UK and 500 in each of Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands.