No two companies are the same, so flexibility is key for a business looking to offer digitalization services to the wealth management space.
This was a major consideration for software solutions company Doxim when it looked to build its Client Onboarding service, Vice President of Sales Scott Biel (picture left), and Senior Business Development executive Curly Lippa (picture right) told FinTech Global.
Doxim is a software services company that helps financial institutions digitalize their operations. It was founded in 2000, with the aim of creating and digitizing documents, and storing them in an archiving platform that would streamline retrieval. As demand increased, the platform expanded to offer document composition and print and mail of client statements, tax slips, transaction confirmations, and other regulatory communications.
The company identified that it could do even more to support businesses if it began capturing documents from the start of customer engagement. This led to the creation of its Client Onboarding (COB) solution. Lippa explains, “I use the analogy of a river. We started off at the mouth of a river, and pretty early on we recognized that most of the documents that we were storing in our enterprise content management solution were being originated somewhere else. So, we kept moving upstream.” By creating a client onboarding solution, Doxim could automate and digitize documents throughout the entire customer journey for its credit unions, community banking, and wealth industries clients.
There are four key problems Doxim Client Onboarding enables businesses to solve. The first is reducing turnaround time to trim account opening down to a couple of days. Traditionally, opening an account could take a number of days to weeks, which in the grab-and-go ecosystem we’re now in, is too long. As Lippa remarks, “if you want to get into the market and invest, a week is a lifetime.”
The next issue the solution eases is that it can significantly lower the document Not In Good Order (NIGO) rate. NIGO paperwork results from situations like those where an organization may collect information on a consumer, but when it comes back to the office, key information has been missed, such as an employee number. This forces the document to be sent back out, wasting time for both client and company. Doxim research suggests the average NIGO rate is 50%. One of Doxim’s clients even experienced a 100% NIGO rate prior to implementing COB. Doxim Client Onboarding resolves the issue by automating and validating information captured at the initial account opening stage, helping to prevent delays later.
By digitizing the onboarding process with Doxim, firms can also ensure they never miss important steps or information needed for compliance. Other organizations have tried to offer non-flexible onboarding tools, but they fail to work as no two organizations handle onboarding in the exact same way, Lippa explains. Doxim differentiates itself by offering its solutions in modular form, empowering clients to make changes to forms or data collection, without needing to hard code or go back to Doxim for help.
Outlining the need for a configurable tool for client onboarding, Lippa recounts, “We knew that regulations, compliance requirements, and forms change all the time. So, when we actually architected the solution, we recognized there needed to be flexibility, because if you build something today, it may not work tomorrow because something has changed in the process or something’s changed in the business.” An onboarding solution needs to be adaptable to various businesses, but also interpretable with existing infrastructure.
Working with Legacy Systems
It is no secret that financial institutions are constrained by legacy systems, but a technology company cannot hope to replace all of the inner workings of a client’s technology stack at once. Savvy technology partners recognize that an institution is not going to simply flip a switch and get rid of all legacy architecture, as these systems are deeply ingrained and have been built upon over many years. This is where having a flexible technology solution that works with existing architecture becomes essential. VP of Sales Scott Biel explains that Doxim solutions are designed to work with an organization’s existing technology ecosystem, as they are modular and based on APIs so firms can pick and choose what bits they need, rather than having to get the full package.
“Some of our biggest challenges have been working with legacy systems, being able to fund projects, and working with legacy business models,” Biel said. “These are all real challenges, but our clients have been overcoming them, and we believe that the current pandemic will accelerate the focus and prioritization that these projects will receive from the CEO level within all financial institutions. In fact, the biggest goal of driving financial organizations towards the digitalization of their businesses is to improve customer engagement.”
“We’re at a tipping point”
Digitizing is no longer an option. More than ever, it is an essential business process. Customer expectations are changing, and people no longer want to physically go into a branch to open an account or communicate with their banks. Both Lippa and Biel agree that big tech companies like Amazon and Google have changed the playing field for everyone. While 20 years ago customers might have been happy to sit in front of someone and fill out reams of documents, today’s customers do not have that same patience. Accustomed to ordering something today and having it delivered tomorrow, customers are impatient with financial service organizations that can’t keep pace.
Additionally, the emergence of COVID-19 has made the need for a good digital customer experience even more clear. Scott Biel said, “The current pandemic has, of course, put stress on our societies at large that we have not seen in a century. Our clients have had to quickly adjust to most of their staff working remotely. They have seen unprecedented increases in inbound customer service inquiries and are facing challenges with the loss of the ability to interact with customers in person. A business that would usually be conducted face to face is now necessarily conducted online.”
Governments and regulators around the world have been trying their hardest to curb the impact the pandemic will cause on the financial ecosystem. The US has recently revealed a $2trn stimulus plan which will support businesses, families, loans, and hospital aid, with more stimulus in the works. Likewise, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, India, Japan, Spain, and many other countries have created similar packages to help businesses impacted by the crisis. This has also been followed by a number of changes to regulatory parameters to ease the burdens of companies during this time.
Despite all this, businesses are still being hit hard, especially those which are heavily reliant on face-to-face interactions. A study from Leesman claimed that in the UK, 56% of workers in the financial services sector had never worked at home. Businesses have been unprepared for this situation, but they are now opening their eyes to the need for robust digital channels. Scott Biel said, “I believe this is the tipping point or impetus towards companies thinking they’ve got to push more aggressively down the digital path. Organizations have the unique opportunity to push forward their digitization initiatives now, as executive interest in and support of these initiatives are at an all-time high.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has also shone a light on the fragility of both the financial ecosystem and many companies’ operational structures. Recognizing that a similar incident could occur in the future, Biel believes governments may place requirements for firms to have robust pandemic plans in place. And regardless of regulation, he says that institutions need to assume something like this will happen again and need strong digital infrastructure so they can more easily deal with a world on lockdown.
For instance, client onboarding, which is a necessary and important process for wealth managers, is one of the key areas to be impacted by the current situation. If to do business with a company, a customer has to go through an account opening or loan origination process which is reliant on paper-intensive or physical interactions in a branch or face-to-face with an advisor, then the firm in question cannot operate in full lockdown.
“We believe that current events are going to drive a mandate within organizations that they have digital onboarding capabilities, not just because their competitors are doing it and not just to get through the situation, but as a permanent fix,” Biel states.
Supporting Clients in Good Times and Bad
During the pandemic, a lot of businesses have faced increased inbound customer service inquiries or challenges to remotely communicate with customers. Doxim’s robust business continuity plans mean it has been prepared for the current scenario and has helped its clients quickly implement solutions and adjust to most of their staff working from home. Curly Lippa explains, “What we have been building for 20 years has really been built to sustain industries and their businesses in good times, bad times, and even pandemics.
“The proof is always in the pudding,” says Lippa. “Here we are in the middle of a pandemic and we have been able to deliver all of our services as a critical extension of our client’s business without missing a beat. We continue to help them digitally onboard their customers, create, store, and deliver their missioncritical customer communications in an omnichannel manner. As we have had all these tools ready and in place for years, so the experience has been seamless for our clients.”
Doxim was recently named in the WealthTech100 2020 list, to check out the full WealthTech100 click here: WealthTech100
Copyright © 2020 FinTech Global
