The future of banking onboarding in India: Top trends in 2024

The Indian banking sector is undergoing a massive transformation, driven by rapid technological advancements, evolving customer expectations, and regulatory changes. As we enter 2024, several key trends are emerging, reshaping the way banks onboard and interact with customers. This blog explores the top trends in banking onboarding set to define the Indian banking landscape in 2024.

1. Accelerating Customer Journeys

According to the findings of a new client onboarding survey conducted by Forrester, more than 64% of banks reported lost deals and revenue as a result of issues in the current onboarding processes take too long and do not provide a comprehensive view of the process for the customer.

Banks are using analytics tools to track customer interactions, identify critical touchpoints, and measure satisfaction. Quick resolution strategies, often powered by automation, address common issues, enhancing the customer experience. A customer-centric approach, involving unified forms and prompt communication reduces dropouts during the onboarding stage.

2. Omnichannel Experience

Financial services lead generation is evolving. Between 75% and 90% of financial services searches start online as per research by LSA Global. These leads can come from multiple sources including but not limited to website forms, apps, customer portals, marketing banners, lead forms, fintech partners, and other channels. This challenge then is to aggregate all the leads, qualify, and nurture them while providing them a unified omni-channel experience.

In 2024, creating a seamless customer experience across online and offline channels is crucial. Banks are investing in responsive design to adapt experiences to different devices and employing AI for personalized interactions. This strategy results in a cohesive and customized journey for customers, ensuring consistency across various touchpoints.

3. Consolidating Critical Communication

2024 sees a focus on streamlining communication to unify brand and customer experience. By centralizing channels and using AI-powered chatbots, banks are enhancing interactions, improving response times, and providing personalized service. Data analytics plays a key role in refining communication, tailoring it to individual customer preferences.

4. Touchpoint Culture

Potential customers often drop-out out of the onboarding process as they do not get timely communication about the progress of their application process. This radio silence often leads to these potential customers running to their nearest competitors.

In 2024, Banks are prioritizing every interaction with customers, underscoring a touchpoint culture. This involves creating touchpoints at every stage of the application and approval process to ensure regular updates to customers. For physical touchpoints, this also means training staff to ensure a cohesive and customer-centric approach, fostering stronger connections with customers through seamless and personalized experiences at every touchpoint.

5. Personalization

In this highly competitive banking world, gaining customer’s loyalty and offering them the best of personalized services and products, based on their individual needs and preferences, is the need of the hour. 70% of consumers are more likely to buy from companies that understand how they use their products/services.

To build stronger relationships with customers, banks are embracing personalization and customer-centric approaches in their onboarding processes. By leveraging data analytics and AI-powered systems, banks can gather insights about customers' preferences, financial goals, and behaviour patterns. This allows them to tailor their onboarding experiences accordingly, offering personalized product recommendations and relevant services. By understanding customers' unique needs and delivering a personalized experience, banks can foster loyalty and engagement, leading to long-term customer satisfaction and retention.

6. Evolution of API Architecture

Better API (Application Programming Interface) management can have a significant positive impact on the operations of banks and financial institutions. APIs are essential for enabling seamless communication and data exchange between different systems, applications, and stakeholders.

API architecture in 2024 within banks is evolving towards uniform functionality. This trend emphasizes the importance of collaboration, both internally and with external partners, particularly FinTech firms, credit bureaus, social applications, and others to perform mandatory KYC checks and credit. It aims to enhance and standardize API functionality in the banking sector, ensuring seamless integration and service delivery scoring at speed and scale.

7. User-Friendly Interfaces

Banks are struggling to handle large volumes of applications in a timely and efficient manner leading to low completion and acceptance rates. Some of the reasons they cited included slow, time-consuming, and lengthy forms, too much repetition of required information, & lack of necessary documents/information.

Banks in 2024 are focusing on user-friendly interfaces and minimizing the data entry by a customer to as minimal as possible. The are deploying unified forms for multiple products (2-in-1 or 3-in-1 account opening), artificial intelligence-based OCR and fetching of data from KYC registries for automated form-filling and fast-tracking digital identity and document checks with automated regulatory checks/reporting while offering digital records and audit trails.

8. Regulators as Digital Disruptors

Government bodies and regulators are emerging as key disruptors in Indian digital banking. They are actively shaping the digital banking landscape, driving financial inclusion, and promoting digital transactions. Regulatory frameworks for digital wallets and payment banks foster innovation and competition, creating a dynamic financial environment. These regulators also ensure the security of operations and manage risks in the rapidly evolving digital financial space.

The banking sector in India is poised for a digital revolution in 2024. With the implementation of innovative technologies like AI, ML and a focus on omnichannel experiences, customer journeys are becoming more streamlined and personalized. The evolution of API architecture and the regulatory landscape are contributing to a more dynamic and customer-centric onboarding landscape. As these trends unfold, they are not only reshaping the banking industry but also setting new standards for customer engagement and satisfaction. The future of banking in India is indeed a fascinating one, marked by technological innovation and a deepened focus on customer needs and experiences.