According to a study, banks are reaping just five to ten percent of the dollar spent on technology to add value to the business. The story underlines the harsh realities of resource mismanagement. Banks’ indiscriminate and biased budget allocation to buy technology and their inability to identify priorities to remain flexible and reciprocate to customer demands.
Digital payments were the earliest disruption to happen long before the onset of the COVID-19. Contactless Payment Technology of the Apples Inc has ushered in a new era in digital payments way back in 2014. COVID-19 however, has accelerated digital disruption in all aspects, including product design, production, sales, after-sales support, risk management, and compliance.
Banks that welcomed the digital disruption by eliminating the redundant and legacy technologies to automate the entire banking process gained a 50% growth in revenue globally in 2018 compared to the banks that followed traditional approaches. The Deloitte Center for Financial Services report on the global banking sector 2022 estimated that the banks within the USA would recover strongly with an average 10.1% Return on Investment in 2021 and an ROI of 10.4% in 2025. The countries of Western Europe, Asia Pacific, and the other emerging markets would suffer heavily in the post-COVID market recovery period.
Let us examine how digital automation helps banks to achieve their business objectives.
While legacy digital technologies impose a heavy burden on the employees, automated, cloud-native platforms like the electronic signature software embedded with the document management system relieve the employees from the routine chores of endless data filling.
Automation of banking workflow helps employees to focus on customer-centric needs. This would help banks enhance their credibility, as they can act quickly and efficiently to honor bank deposit maturity payments and grant loans in time.
According to a survey among bank executives worldwide, 65% of them have opined that the branch-based business model will seize to exist within the next five years. Over 60% of the bank customers prefer only digital channels, and one in every 5th person in the US is not keen on visiting a branch personally and 51% customers among them are transacting through mobile phones.
By automating the bank workflow, banks can attend personalized needs of the customers, acting on a loan request or a property mortgage. Automation allows banks to create a document with templates for loan application forms or a term deposit request at a time to share it with customers via cloud-native platforms.
Customers hate waiting for their turn to open a bank account by physically visiting a branch. They got fed up with lengthy documentation and loan processing. Automation helps banks onboard customers online, where banks import data and images and fix the electronic signature to complete the process without wasting their time while offering a unique digital experience.
In many surveys and interviews, when asked to react to the reforms they would like to bring to the banking sector majority of CEOs have replied by saying digitization. The banking sector is allocating more digital budgets than any other industry. Yet, it is unable to optimize its utility.
It is time for them to stay back and observe whether or not these investments are reaping the expected returns. The electronic signature software does not demand the banks to invest exorbitantly, as it is highly compatible with the existing technologies/ The banks can integrate them with the applications in use at present.
The electronic signature comes in an affordable price range with several advanced features. Banks can stop spending money on printing voluminous balance sheets, annual reports, performance reports, and credit recovery performance by switching to digital mode.
The banking sector can save time and money by relying on the electronic signature software that facilitates banks to store and re-use templates such as application forms, bill books, vouchers, and acknowledgment receipts. Banks can modify, edit, add or remove columns and templates to meet diverse customer expectations. Banks need not re-create any document several times. Banks, therefore can spend IT budgets judiciously on technologies that accelerate the phase of banking operations.
Banks have to spend money on papers, printing, image scanning, and processing applications in the retail banking sector for opening bank accounts, term deposits, maintaining pension accounts, issuing debit and credit cards, loans, and mortgage requests. The activities mentioned above follow a unique pattern, compelling the banks and the customers to produce personal information, proof, and evidence. Corporate banking has its challenges that expect the bank to address. The eco-friendly electronic signature platform automates daily routine with accuracy, without wasting money on paper, printing, scanning, and despatching through a courier service to reach the end-user.
Banks must comply with region-specific regulatory norms of the territory where it operates. While the eSignature Directive governs the regulatory framework of the countries within the EU, the ESIGN Act of the US federal law of the year 2000 provides legal sanctity to the documents and records if multiple stakeholders are involved in a contract signing have chosen to sign using the electronic signature.
By signing a document using the electronic signature, banks agree to comply with the laws of the land. The electronic signature acts as a digital ledger, which records the date and time when the signer acted on the document. It also issues a digital certificate with a digital seal to protect customer privacy and data safety.
Banks can remotely sign affidavits, eNotaries, and contract agreements using this platform to assess asset value in property or vehicle mortgaging cases. Banks can verify proofs, personal identities, and customer information to mitigate risks while signing a loan agreement contract.
This turns the document tamper-proof, as it allows no scope for fraudulent practices or signature forgery. A stakeholder that signs a contract can conduct a digital audit to verify the document's originality that remains intact and accessible anytime.
An FBI report states a $7billion loss to cybercrimes in the USA in 2021.
The electronic signature turns the document encrypted so that the intended signer alone can access the document. This feature helps fight fraudulent actors that wish to crack the the customer information.
When does an SME approach banks for assistance? What is the ideal time for the banks to encourage families towards term deposits? What could be the spending behavior of the customers this holiday season, and what kind of relief packages can boost customers’ spending behavior?
These questions are critical for the banks to achieve their quarter-end targets. The AI-enabled electronic signature platforms offer analytics for the banks to design marketing strategies and create new and innovative products and services.
It is time for the banks to transform into digital native organizations to automate workflow to save time, money, and efforts by redefining routine work that consumes employees’ productive time. Banks that acted on redundant digital applications to optimize their digital spending towards automation have made significant revenue gains because they could frame effective strategies to success while complying with privacy and data safety.
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