Wayne Johnson, CEO & Co-Founder for Encompass Corporation

Positive customer experience is crucial to building and growing a successful business and since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has undoubtedly been a shift in expectations. Consumers demand a better, more inclusive round-the-clock service than ever before.

In the banking and finance sectors, particularly, creating an efficient and seamless customer cycle that keeps pace with adjacent sectors, such as retail and consumer technology, is not an easy task. This is because of the stringent regulations that can create barriers to the optimal journey. These days, customers will be all too familiar with the ticks and checks that need to be completed for things as seemingly harmless as opening a banking app.

Of course, these Customer Due Diligence (CDD) processes play a vital role in helping to prevent dirty money from being flooded through global banking systems but, if not executed in a way that is quick and simple, this can lead to customer service that falls short of these heightened expectations.

The importance of technology to overall success is becoming increasingly apparent, with challenger banks and FinTechs, including Monzo and Starling, shining examples of financial services firms that place it at the centre of everything they do. As a result, they score extremely highly for customer satisfaction, and are now seriously competing with centuries-old traditional banks.

These banks, too, typically have a more dynamic and purpose-built digital ecosystem, enabled by a cutting-edge cloud infrastructure, which allows them to quickly adapt to regulatory and industry changes, as well as shifts in modern day customer experience trends. More traditional institutions, on the other hand, have largely been hindered by legacy technology and time intensive manual processes.

Digitalising the customer’s journey 

With Covid-19 further cementing the banking sector’s digital future, transforming processes and systems, as well as overhauling legacy technology, might sound like a big job, but it is undoubtedly a critical element to meaningful progress in today’s evolving landscape.

This is where RegTech comes in, as banks transform their CDD with KYC automation. This brings both effectiveness and efficiency, while ensuring regulatory obligations are met.

The latest in automated solutions can also supply digital customer profiles that are dynamic and easily updated, reducing risk and slashing the impact of previously associated manual labour, costs and time. This also reduces instances of unnecessary work when KYC is repeated for remediation needs, at periodic review, event driven refresh or perpetual KYC (pKYC).

Additionally, an emerging digital ecosystem for customer experience management can integrate a firm’s programme with an automated due diligence platform, sharing valuable data about corporate customers with teams responsible for growing revenues and profits and breaking down organisational siloes.

By investing in RegTech, customers will see more beneficial results, and banks will find tangible business efficiencies, as staff will be able to concentrate their expertise and time where it really counts - on providing a best-in-class service to those they are serving.