A local Malaysian bank recently introduced two digital-first solutions for customers, namely the online-to-branch account opening process for individual banking customers and Biz Financing Portal for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). These paperless solutions are aimed at making the bank’s banking offerings more accessible, providing safety and convenience by leveraging digital capabilities to enhance the customer experience.
Individual customers are now able to submit their application, to open a current or savings account, online via the bank’s new online-to-branch account opening process. Customers can pre-fill an account opening e-form on the bank’s website to initiate the process. Once submitted, customers are able to make use of a dedicated e-account opening priority queue available in all branches for the last step of their application i.e., the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) due diligence, to complete the account opening.
This solution has been rolled out to all branches nationwide and has since reduced the service time for account opening by more than 50%. As for SMEs, they will now be able to submit financing applications online at the bank’s Biz Financing Portal. The portal will enable SME customers to upload documents and submit loan applications entirely online, providing convenience by eliminating the need to visit a branch. The portal was launched on 13 July 2020, and customers can now utilise the portal to apply.
The Group Chief Strategy & Design Officer of the bank stated that the introduction of these digital-first initiatives matters more than ever under the new normal of banking and payments today. These initiatives are aligned with the bank’s two main pivots of Forward23 i.e., customer and, tech and data, aiming to digitise and simplify the bank’s products and processes to provide a more seamless and convenient banking experience to our customers.
Digitalising their banking process also addresses the social distancing considerations to protect the well-being of the bank’s customers and employees by significantly reducing the amount of physical interaction required. The current situation has and will certainly reshape customers’ banking behaviour going forward and is accelerating their pace of innovation to deliver the best value proposition to meet their demand whilst keeping them and our employees safe at all times.
Complementing the bank’s Biz Financing Portal is the Amazing Customer Experience (ACE) productivity tool for the Bank’s Relationship Managers (RMs), which enables them to submit loan applications from commercial customers for processing online. Live since 11 November 2019, the mobile productivity tool is equipped with optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities for robotic process automation (RPA), allowing RMs to extract data securely and efficiently to autofill required details.
This cuts processing time by reducing manual data entry and automating loan processing. Clients will also receive automatic notifications on their application status, ensuring full transparency. With ACE, RMs remain safe and productive while continuing to serve customers’ needs remotely. These solutions are part of the bank’s on-going initiatives to improve end-to-end customer experience using a design-thinking approach, spearheaded by a Transforming Customer Journey (TCJ) unit.
Moving forward, the bank will continue with its digitalisation efforts to enhance customer experience and support customers’ needs, particularly in the COVID-19 environment.
