TowerGroup Event on Account Initiation in a Multichannel Environment
Banks Must Reengineer Processes to Achieve Account Growth
December 15, 2009
Zoot, a leading provider of advanced instant credit decisioning and loan origination solutions, sponsored a TowerGroup interactive breakfast briefing in New York entitled, “Ready, Set, Open: Account Initiation in a Multichannel Environment.” Attendees included financial executives from the nation’s largest money center institutions.
The event focused on account initiation from varying perspectives including: the customer experience and point of view, how banks respond to consumer information and preferences, and an account opening process that considers all channels and lines of business. The presentation stressed that addressing the business process first enables banks to better determine what technology is needed to enable a cohesive process for account initiation.
“One of the key takeaways for me was the concept of driving for higher uniformity in originations, essentially to make any customer origination via any channel more efficient and effective, through a simple mental model change. If we first start process redesign by streamlining the most complex origination process it should make it significantly easier to work with that as a design backbone and add-on/adapt the remaining origination processes,” said Rick Otero, EVP of Shared Services and Customer Experience at Capital One Bank. “Another learning from the session is that IT processes should be pointed toward meeting your business strategy instead of the latest technology driving your goals. Too often banks get enamored with the newest WOW technology and a preconceived notion that it will magically solve business needs, instead of taking a customer centric approach and working from the front-end (customer driven) instead of the back-end (IT driven). If banks apply some of these concepts they can come pretty close to a clean sheet business approach and one that allows them to reengineer their processes to be on-target to what they want the customers’ experience to be.”
Nicole Sturgill, research director of delivery channels at TowerGroup, discussed the importance of not getting paralyzed by current methods and reengineering processes to achieve an enterprise approach to account origination. “Capital conservation may be a top business driver, but banks can’t afford to sit still forever. Those that do not innovate to increase deposits will find themselves scrambling to stay afloat later,” said Sturgill. “The idea of reengineering can be scary but must be tackled head-on by IT, the lines of business, marketing, and audit together. Bringing everyone together is a hard thing to do but this is no longer a choice if banks want to remain competitive and achieve account growth.”
Key takeaways from the presentation included: significant efficiency gains can still be found in every institution regardless of size, options are now available to achieve enterprise integration across channels and business lines through multi-channel service oriented architecture and bank divisions must work together to define a holistic business strategy so they can employ a universal solution.
For more information about effective account opening, download the brief “An Integrated Approach to Account Origination.”
About Zoot
Bozeman, Mont.-based Zoot Enterprises, Inc. provides credit decisioning and loan origination solutions through a configurable, scalable and reliable platform to large and innovative U.S. financial services institutions. Visit http://www.zootweb.com or call 406.556.7555 for more information.
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