We have grown the online channel for onboarding new customers from 35% to 60%

Innovating and digitising

The onboarding, identification, and verification of new customers is a time-consuming manual process and the existing online process, using derived identification, had a high failure rate.

Emy Leemans, Product Manager Customer Onboarding, together with her team, creates the online onboarding process for new customers. She wondered how the current online process could become faster, with better quality and more customer-friendly. ReadID was already used to identify young people with an account who turned 18 years old. This experience was used for online onboarding with ReadID.

During the previous identification process, the future customer used to be asked for a copy of the identity document. This person then had to transfer a 1 cent payment from an existing bank account to confirm their identity.

A Rabobank team manually processed all requests. About 50% of all applications were rejected, in 3/4 of the cases the information on the ID was not clearly legible, incomplete or shielded, ID proofs were expired or something went wrong with the payment of 1 cent.

The need to improve the speed, user-friendliness, and quality of this process was evident. In addition, Rabobank also wanted an alternative for derived identification. They were limited by the fact that customers need a different payment account at a Dutch bank, and have to rely on the identification that has taken place there. Being able to carry out the identification themselves online gives Rabobank more certainty and they can offer this process to a broader target group.

In collaboration with ReadID, the expansion of the existing Rabo Mobile Identify app was initiated.

How ReadID helps

The process was quickly set in motion and positioned within the bank by Emy's team. A nice bonus is the fine collaboration between ReadID and the Rabobank team. Together they set up the app and performed maintenance.

The app has been used since February 2020. The manual processing has been completely replaced by the new online process. Now, other services are starting to use ReadID as well. 

“The app is easy to use, reliable and identification and verification is completed within minutes.”

Results

Some people within the bank thought that using a separate app for onboarding would be a risk and would cause people to drop out. ReadID showed the opposite is true: The number of customers who board online has almost doubled. The online channel for onboarding new customers has increased from 35% to 60%. The app is easy to use, reliable, and identification and verification is completed within minutes. This system uses biometric monitoring to make a more objective observation than a human being can do.

At the end of the process, Rabobank gives its clients the opportunity to assess the process. The target for this Customer Effort Score was set at 80%. They are now well above that with 88%. The feedback they receive from users includes comments such as "Is fantastic", "Fast" and "Clear"

Within Rabobank, too, colleagues are still impressed by the rapid and effective digitisation and are looking at other ways of applying it inside and outside the bank, such as in mortgages and leasing. The aim is to integrate the functionalities of the Rabo Mobile Identification App into the Rabo App.