How Banks Can Make Sign-Ups Simple

Four guidelines for creating an exceptional digital enrollment experience.

Today, banking customers don’t just want great digital experiences — they expect them. The digital bar has been raised everywhere else in their lives. Why should their banking interactions be any different? When a credit card application or car loan is slow and clunky, banks get a quantifiable blow to the bottom line — a trickle-down effect where unhappy customers can choose a competitor with a simple click or just drop out of the sign-up process altogether.

The enrollment process shouldn’t be an afterthought, especially because it’s often the first experience customers have with a bank. Now, more than ever, banks need to put their best digital foot forward by making forms and applications a fully digital, uninterrupted process that doesn’t just deliver the kind of experience customers expect — it gives banks the speed and efficiency to transform an enrollment experience and turn it into a competitive advantage.

For even the most left-brained bankers, the prospect of overhauling a sprawling mix of paper and PDF forms and legacy systems sounds like no picnic. But fortunately, it’s possible to make a fully digital enrollment experience that’s fast, efficient, and scalable. Using the guidelines below, this journey can be far less jumbled and a lot more linear.

Four guidelines, one goal

The enrollment process can seem complex and daunting. We get it. But where should banks start? Breaking the journey down into small steps can keep it simple and reframe the entire process as a gradual transformation with each step leading to greater efficiency. To help, we’ve designed a guide with questions that can determine where your bank falls along the path. You can read it and answer the questions here.

But regardless of whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to take the next step in the journey, here are four key guidelines banks should consider when creating a fully digital enrollment process.

1. Make it easy

At their best, enrollment experiences become simple and easy by removing extra steps and guesswork from the process. Banking customers should be able to sign forms and applications electronically. Banks should be able to validate government-issued IDs without making customers drive to a branch.

You’ll automatically set your enrollment process apart if you remove the slightest whiff of friction — printing, scanning, ink signatures, and in-person interactions — and replace it with verified e-signatures, mobile- responsive forms, and ID verification that’s as effortless as a selfie.

Reducing steps means fewer opportunities for customers to drop out of the process and fewer excuses to find a competitor.

2. Make it fast

An experience that spans across channels and devices makes enrollment fast and efficient. In some cases, it’s shaving days off loan approvals. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Efficiency injects visibility into the enrollment process. Banks can see who’s dropping out, and, more importantly, where. Forms and documents can automatically be routed to the right people at the right time, and data can be automatically mapped directly from those forms to back-end systems, eliminating the need for manual or duplicate data entry. Sure, fast is definitely a boon in the customer experience department, but it also makes the entire process more efficient for banks. And efficiency might very well be the holy grail in the digital enrollment journey.

“Credit card applications are signed and returned in an average of 17.3 minutes – a huge gain compared to paper applications.” – Jonathan Back, Chief Financial Officer and Operations Director, Diners Club UK and Ireland

3. Make it convenient

Integrating your digital enrollment process with the systems you’re already using is a powerful — but often overlooked — key to building more speed and efficiency into the enrollment process. After all, nobody wants to spend months re-coding or training employees on yet another software solution. The mere thought of adding another complicated layer on top of a complex process is enough to give even the most forward-thinking bank pause.

Easy integration is a painless way to make sign-ups simpler for banks. For example, Adobe Document Cloud uses pre-built integration and comprehensive APIs that work with Microsoft Office 365, Dynamics 365, SharePoint, and Salesforce, among others. It cuts down on the time it takes for banks to implement solutions, and lets them introduce standardization to the process with a central template library for applications and forms. The result: less time coding and more time focusing on the customer experience.

4. Make it compliant

No matter how fast, fluid, or efficient a digital enrollment process may be, if it’s not compliant, secure, and legally binding, it won’t work — especially today when protecting customer data has never been more relevant or important. But banks should look at security and compliance as more than a checklist item because the right solution can automatically help them keep up with the most demanding e-sign requirements and laws around the world while creating easy-to-follow audit trails if issues ever pop up.

We’re there from first click to final approval

From first e-signature to final approval, Adobe Document Cloud, including Adobe Sign and Adobe Acrobat,can help banks turn the enrollment process into a competitive advantage. It provides banks with fillable PDFs, globally compliant e-signatures, automated workflow, and pre-built integrations with the software you already use, robust APIs, and world-class security and compliance features. Whether you’re transforming from a mostly paper-based system or a solution that’s not quite fully digital, Adobe Document Cloud can help you make sign-ups simple.

To see how Adobe Document Cloud can put more efficiency, simplicity, and speed to work for banks, click here for a free demo and consultation. To read the full report, click here.