Hassan Reda is the Group Lead of Product and Design for Standard Chartered nexus, a Banking-as-a-Service proposition by Standard Chartered. Based in Singapore, Hassan has been leading Onboarding, Identity, Risk, Mobile and Design for the white-label plug-and-play banking solution with a vision to redefine the banking experience for customers globally by digitally marrying ecosystems to banks. The first market is Indonesia, where the Bank has announced two partners, including e-commerce giant Bukalapak, with further plans to expand in the region.
With the very successful launch of BukaTabungan, a digital banking service that combines the reach of Bukalapak’s all-commerce platform and the technology of Standard Chartered’s Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution to offer users greater convenience and security, we ask Hassan what the secret is – what makes BukaTabungan different, and so-very-accessible, from the point of onboarding?
I think what makes Standard Chartered nexus different is our entire approach to banking. Banking is typically an experience that causes users quite a bit of pain because of the confusing online-offline journey that's also full of friction. It's one of the main reasons many incumbent banks are losing market share to innovative digital challengers acquiring customers in their ecosystems at scale. So, naturally, we ask ourselves: how do we make the user experience (UX) better? How do we make banking less painful and perhaps even enjoyable? The focus on the user forms the basis of our banking-as-a-service framework.
Then we look to something people actually enjoy using on a daily basis, especially for those in the Southeast Asian region, since it's where we are rolling out our service: superapps.
The very instinctive behaviour of users, many of whom are digital natives, going from one service or product offering on superapps became an important reference for us when designing the user journey. Because customers now expect financial services to offer the same experience starting from onboarding.
BukaTanbungan is designed to truly make a difference instead of being just another digital banking app. It provides a real step-change towards financial inclusion, so it needs to be accessible, secure and easy-to-use.
As a service within Bukalapak’s platform, BukaTabungan offers banking services seamlessly to Bukalapak’s ecosystem of over 110 million users and 20 million business owners, enhanced by a completely digital, non-face-to-face onboarding experience which is provided by ADVANCE.AI. Using advanced automation and security technologies employing artificial intelligence, biometric facial recognition and e-KTP (Indonesia’s biometrics-enabled ID programme) validation, opening an account on BukaTabungan is paperless and at least 20% faster than the usual digital banking process.
And it started with us asking: how can we optimise the UX? How can we cut another step? Because the more steps there are in an onboarding or verification process, the higher the drop-off rate. Onboarding and eKYC are pretty much the same for banks, but when you look into their workflows, you'll realise some things were done out of legacy or short-term conveniences, so we re-engineered and optimised the process to one that focuses on the user – but always keeping compliance in mind. By ruthlessly cutting unnecessary steps without compromising regulation needs, we offer a more frictionless verification process that is fully compliant with OJK's (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or Financial Services Authority of Indonesia) guidelines.
Your onboarding strategy in big cities will vary from that for the suburbs, mainly because of your users' expectations, behaviours as well as resources available to them. Think of users in Singapore or in Jakarta vs Yogyakarta for instance. Users may be using higher-end smartphones vs entry-level mobile devices with a lower res camera, so businesses need to cater for different users. This is especially so for those implementing solutions regionally or globally. Sometimes, within the same market, users can be very different too.
Another thing to consider: the environment. You may already know that most of the time, onboarding is actually done in environments, such as in the bed, in the car, or in a low-light area in one's office. So your verification tech or verification tech partner needs to take these into account.
Various vendors may also promise high accuracy when it comes to their optical character recognition (OCR) when it comes to ID card verification. Now, you see, identification cards are important documents, but as we bring them everywhere we go, and perhaps use them for various verification purposes, chances of ID cards being broken, or missing a corner can be quite high.
So my tip to businesses would be: it's not about picking the cheapest vendor, but a partner that understands the actual onboarding process and is able to cater to the various needs, from the environment and tech to lighting. Because there is the potential hidden cost of high drop-offs that you may not know yet.
Many successful brands don't treat customers equally, and they do this by offering each customer a personalised experience whenever they interact with the brand. With verification, the risk-based approach is nearly the same. For example, if a customer is deemed as low-risk, then you can keep friction to a minimal by carrying out basic customer due diligence (CDD). And if a customer is seen as high-risk, then you may want to conduct enhanced due diligence (EDD) to make sure you keep out fraud and potential money-laundering activities.
Personalising verification lets you adjust to each customer's needs, and it's beneficial for businesses not only at the point of onboarding. Businesses upsell and cross-sell service and product offerings later on in the customer relationship, and these often require various other document verification. This flexibility will help increase the customer lifetime value.
Many often wonder if verification will change in the future. Will eKYC work for my avatar? Will verified identities be transferable in the metaverse? I think as we approach a Web3 world where we are linking the physical world to the digital and digital to the metaverse, these principles will help provide a good verification and onboarding framework for even more diverse use cases.
Want to learn more about eKYC and verification that works for your organisation? Book a demo session with us to find out.