Customers signing up for new accounts and services can feel frustrated by the hoops they have to go through, assembling information and entering it in complicated, sometimes multiple forms, whether on paper or online. What they may not realize is that the process can be just as frustrating for the people working at financial institutions, or other businesses performing underwriting functions.

Too often, technology forces both consumers and businesses to adapt to outdated onboarding processes rather than the other way around. In a PaymentsJournal Podcast, Penny Townsend, Chief Product Officer at Qualpay, and Don Apgar, Director of Merchant Payments at Javelin Strategy & Research, discussed how the next generation of onboarding and underwriting procedures could bring greater efficiency and effectiveness for everyone involved.

A Siloed Approach to Onboarding

Onboarding is a financial services company’s first opportunity to build a relationship with its customers, so it’s vital to make the process as painless as possible. Yet too many companies still make it cumbersome. For example:

“When people sign up for a bank account, and want a debit or credit card along with the bank account there are multiple applications they have to fill out,” said Townsend. “If I applied for two or three different services, I likely have to fill in secondary and tertiary applications that don’t copy over the data already fed into it.”

Financial services companies have long been a siloed environment, but many organizations are realizing that by connecting their onboarding processes, they can also streamline their internal systems. For example, it’s possible to combine for a business, a bank account, credit card processing, and ACH transaction processing into one application that flows seamlessly through underwriting.

The key is to templatize the information and present it in a data-driven, no-code way, creating a unified experience across all financial products. The goal should be to shift the effort of customers bending to how the technology, the vendor and the implementation require data to be input to how can we optimize the experience to reduce repetition and breakdown the silos that existing for different financial products. Creating better customer experience and more transparency and integrity in the data used to manage ongoing risk and compliance.

“My team is out there talking to people about how they actually onboard customers,” said Townsend. “Sometimes if some of the data has to change on the application, a new application has to be sent out, creating friction right at the beginning. Some applications are manually underwritten, which means they take the data set, log into the third-party tools, then verify that the data set matches what was on the application. After they’ve done the data verification, they’ll do the physical underwrite, but they’re manually inputting it maybe into two or three different systems for different tracking purposes.

“So if you ask me about how automation helps scale onboarding operations, it’s a game changer,” said Townsend. “Move away from the bespoke applications that people have bought in order to solve problems, and start looking more broadly and more holistically. Ask the question, “how can I delight the consumer when they’re applying for something?” By making the onboarding experience as efficient, effective, and speedy as possible.”

Bundling the Processes

The implications extend beyond onboarding efficiencies. Consolidating multiple workflows into a single system powered by a common dataset not only streamlines operations but also enables businesses to present products together in combinations that align with how consumers prefer to buy them.

“If somebody comes in to open a business DDA, you can ask if they would like to set up merchant services at the same time,” said Apgar. “You’re not making them go through a separate application. And what that does for the customer is that it incorporates multiple products into a single buying decision. With a discrete workflow, after they buy product A, you have to ask, now would you like to buy product B? If you can bundle B with A in the combined onboarding process, that makes the buying decision much easier for the consumer.”

Benefits Throughout the Organization

The onboarding application should be able to accommodate a variety of financial service products, treating each application as structured data that can be validated through automated tools. A simple rules-based engine can then provide a clear red light/green light decision on whether to proceed.

The benefits of this approach cascade throughout the organization. As compliance requirements grow more complex, a transparent workflow becomes invaluable. Without technology that consolidates and supports the process, audits are difficult to manage because data is scattered across disparate systems.

This structure also supports risk management throughout the customer lifecycle. Because underwriting data feeds directly into the risk engine within the same platform, all information remains consistent and accessible. If an underwrite needs to be revisited, the data and tools are already integrated. By simplifying the process, organizations can improve quality while reducing expenses.

“We see that a lot in banking from our clients,” said Apgar. “For whichever product the customer requests, the team gathers the underwriting or risk metrics relevant for that product. If the customer wants a different product, they gather additional data from a different database. Measuring compliance and maintaining viability of the customer relationship requires stringing together a whole chain of information that’s not in an essential spot. There’s a ton of room for increased efficiency.”

Townsend added: “One of my dreams is to make that experience be as transparent as possible. We want people to make that critical decision the same every single time, so we can see how that decision’s been made and know that that if I send the same data set tomorrow, the same decisions are actually going to be made.”

Adding AI Into the Mix

This is where artificial intelligence shines—culling through large amounts of data to find patterns and detect anomalies. It’s challenging to maintain a complete 360-degree view of the customer relationship as it evolves. At this point, any organization that automates underwriting is going to rely on AI and rules-based engines.

Every business engaged in underwriting must have a policy reflected in the system in use. Too often, that policy is separated from the actual underwriting process, and people get caught out because they’re not truly following it. The next generation of platforms has the opportunity to bring that policy to life.

“When you start to use all of that intelligence and let the actual policy breathe life within the platform, now you get transparency and true predictability,” said Townsend.

It’s common for organizations to fall short by expecting underwriters to know everything about the policy and implement it manually. By shifting these elements to the platform, businesses can build greater transparency and predictability while also giving underwriters more space to focus on judgment-based decisions. When AI is introduced as a component, it not only adds options and flexibility but also enables the development of policies that are more adaptive—policies that better serve both customers and underwriters.