A third of European consumers want biometrics to speed up financial service onboarding

Financial service providers are not taking full enough advantage of biometrics to speed up onboarding processes, 34 percent of European consumers say, according to new research released by Signicat. The average amount of time after which consumers abandon financial services applications is 14 minutes and 20 seconds, and 55 percent of potential customers are lost if applications take longer than that to complete.

The new “Battle to On-board III” report, based on a survey of adults from several countries in Europe, shows the most commonly reported frustration points in the financial services application process are the amount of personal information required, which was cited by 31 percent, and the length of time it takes, which was named by 28 percent.

After five minutes, 12 percent abandon application attempts, the survey found. After 10 minutes, the abandonment rate jumps to 40 percent, and after 20 minutes, 70 percent have abandoned the attempt. An hour after an application has begun, 93 percent will abandon it if the attempt is still not completed. Nearly one in three applications (29 percent) take more than 20 minutes to complete, Signicat says, meaning many customers are being lost.

“Competition from challenger banks and fintechs is moving the benchmark for success when it comes to on-boarding. More than half of potential customers are now abandoning applications after 14 minutes and 20 seconds, not very much time to get all the KYC information required. Providers are wasting thousands of marketing pounds and euros just to get customers to the on-boarding stage only to lose them,” says Signicat VP of Identity and Innovation John Erik Setsass. “Financial service providers need to explore new technologies, especially digital identity, to meet this challenge—those that do will win the battle to on-board.”

Financial institutions and insurers are advised to use existing digital identity credentials, such as eID schemes, or integrate intelligent document scanning and validation technologies into their offerings.

Signicat recently acquired digital trust service integration company Idfy to grow its portfolio of services.

Article Topics

banking  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  Europe  |  fintech  |  identity verification  |  KYC