Intesa (IBM Group), PWC and Bandyer join forces to provide a digital onboarding of banking customers that is both highly responsive and secure

Thanks to an already established partnership, the three companies will offer a solution facilitating direct interaction between customers and banks.

Smart working, cloud technologies, digital platforms. The lockdown has drawn a line in the digital-transformation sand, underscoring the importance of being able to carry out customer service and relations remotely. Make no mistake, digital customer experience should not be underestimated. In fact, it is set to play a key role in companies’ strategic decisions over the next few months, having become one of the primary channels for meeting customer needs.
Naturally, within that context, there comes the need to digitize and modernize banking services as well, in order to make them faster and more accessible to customers.

Consulting, competency, and innovation technology

To meet this demand, a banking process and service development plan was launched, to allow online-banking services to be easily accessed remotely, so that banking customers can skip the trip to the bank.
Taking part in the project were PWC, the auditing and consulting firm, Intesa, part of the IBM Group providing support to business customers as they go paperless, and Bandyer, a scale-up providing video-collaboration platforms that easily integrate with third-party systems.
This collaboration, which aims to find a common denominator amongst the characteristics and strengths of each of the three companies, has already yielded results in terms of a number of tangible projects completed with the leading Italian banks.
Within this collaboration, and with the valuable support of PWC, Intesa has made its skill set available to build a digital-onboarding process for banking customers, with video-recognition and advanced electronic signature (“FEA”) integration options. This allows for certified and secure online banking services. This process allows the bank to identify its customers remotely, to send contract forms, and to permit electronic signatures, all from the customer’s own home or office.

High-speed, real-time video interaction

The integration of these functions within the bank’s own application is made possible thanks to technology provided by Bandyer, which is able to quickly and immediately create a video-communication connection between the bank and its customer.
The Bandyer technology allows for a private channel of communication to be set up by the bank, thereby reducing processing and online-banking service times, optimizing digital customer management.
This allows the bank and customer alike to be able to interact more quickly. Their connection is now just a click away, with all the standard video-communication tools (chat, videoconferencing, collaboration platform) available, which is especially helpful for any remotely provided support and consulting.
The project, which was the brainchild of PWC, Intesa, and Bandyer, is quite the feather in the cap for these institutions, streamlining the paperless and omnichannel approach all major banks are now taking even further.

Integration of advanced technologies and the future of onboarding

For this digital onboarding procedure, a number of high-tech solutions were incorporated. To wit, certain AI algorithms have been implemented to check for “liveliness,” meaning that the procedure is being performed by a real-live person (and not a “bot”). Additionally, biometric technologies have been used to record digital thumbprints and to complete face-matching, to check that the individual carrying out the transaction matches the face appearing on the ID provided.

We estimate that by 2024 (Source: IDC), 74% of customers will prefer using a digital channel to interact with their bank branch. The option to engage with the bank entirely in the digital realm will be one of the key elements to guide customer decisions.
Digital onboarding procedures are, and will continue to be one of the leading areas in which to make technological investments as well. The most recent innovations in the field are customer voice recognition, which will make interactions that much simpler and more secure. In the very near future, you will be able to access the full gamut of banking operations with a voice command.