Global risk and information solutions provider TransUnion introduced recently Seamless Onboarding solutions, which is aimed at helping financial institutions address client pain points as well as provide identity verification and reduce fraud.
The COVID-19 pandemic has become the driving force in digital acceleration across all industries. Online transactions are now essential tools both for businesses and customers.
TransUnion Seamless Onboarding services aim to provide consumers with an easy digital application and onboarding experience. Already available in other TransUnion markets, TransUnion Seamless Onboarding enables promises to the end-to-end digital (or digital-assisted) onboarding process that delivers a friction-right experience, while increasing conversions and loyalty, reducing fraud, and driving operational efficiencies.
TransUnion introduces suite of credit reporting solutions
TransUnion launches identity verification fraud prevention solution
Delivered via a single platform and a single API that significantly reduces integration time and effort for financial institutions, TransUnion Seamless Onboarding encompasses identity verification, fraud prevention, credit risk decisioning, and service orchestration to bring a differentiated and holistic solution to the Philippine market. As an example for consumers, this means being able to instantly apply for financial products like credit cards via mobile or at a branch near the point-of-sale and getting approved soon enough to be able to snag a store promotion for 0% installment exclusive to that credit card.
“Financial institutions are often reliant upon legacy or multiple systems and have to choose between maintaining those systems and developing new platforms,” said Pia Arellano, president and CEO, TransUnion Philippines. “At TransUnion, we have focused on designing a service that delivers a full range of solutions that are easy to integrate for our customers, and our flexible orchestration and plug-and-play offering is configurable to meet evolving business needs.”
Addressing risk of fraud
Citing its previous study titled “TransUnion PH ‘mystery shopping’ onboarding study” published in 2019, TransUnion said that even before the pandemic, financial providers in the Philippines faced large dropouts during onboarding both offline and online, largely due to inconvenient, confusing, and time-consuming application processes and slow turnaround. Recent studies by TransUnion Philippines found that most banks’ digital channels use application forms that are very cumbersome and provide a poor and lengthy customer experience. When applying via a website, the process could take over 40 minutes, as entry fields are often redundant.
In many instances, if applicants lose internet connection midway while filling in a form, they often need to restart the application from the very first page. Its own report also in 2019 found that “completed applications, meanwhile, require the consumer to go through a lengthy and manual verification process involving multiple interactions with the bank agents. At bank branches, queues tend to be long and the verification is done manually or sometimes over the phone. On the other hand, turnaround times from credit application to approval take eight days or longer for 42% of credit cards, 51% of installment loans, and 91% of auto loans.”
Risk management
Digital application processes that are not fast and easy and that don’t effectively balance the consumer experience with risk management can cause financial institutions to lose large numbers of potential customers, especially amid a fast-growing local financial services industry driven by technology trends. TransUnion Seamless Onboarding eases the burden of manual review and stitched-together onboarding setups from multiple providers. With this, financial institutions can deliver a streamlined experience wherein consumers can complete their application in one sitting — anytime, anywhere — without compromising their privacy or security.
“TransUnion Seamless Onboarding encompasses a multi-layered fraud strategy that leverages TransUnion’s vast offline and online data, insights, and analytics to not only create a great experience for good customers but also effectively trap fraudsters,” Arellano said.
Customer safety
Customer safety when doing online transactions is even more important now as a recent report by TransUnion titled “Suspected Online Fraud Originating from the Philippines Doubled During Pandemic” found that suspected fraud originating from the Philippines during the period from March 11 to April 28 increased by 119% compared to the pre-ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) levels. With TransUnion Seamless Onboarding, the Philippines’ financial services industry will be able to address the increased risks of fraud that come with the rise in digital transactions as people continue to observe social distancing.
“What we essentially offer is a holistic solution to the various facets of the digital journey within the finance industry, most especially in this uncertain business climate,” said Arellano. “There is a significant opportunity to support digital transformation in the finance sector to further drive economic opportunity in the Philippines. The current reality calls for innovative ways to reach the unserved and underserved markets.”