Reinventing Originations in the Digital Era

In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven society, market incumbents across a variety of industries have had to reinvent themselves in the face of massive digital disruption. Before the iPod, music industry executives couldn’t fathom the idea that consumers might prefer to buy individual songs rather than a whole album. Before Uber or Lyft, taxi company executives couldn’t imagine consumers would be comfortable summoning unlicensed strangers to pick them up in their cars and drive them around.

Not every industry experiences these same tectonic shifts and not every company ends up getting run out of business by an Apple or an Uber. However, avoiding this fate requires market incumbents in every industry to consistently and rigorously evaluate the ways in which they are harnessing emerging technologies to meet their customers’ evolving expectations.

So where does this consumer experience driven, digital world leave financial institutions?  The answer of course, is “it depends.” For some, the service that they offer is so differentiated in the market that people are willing to take extra time and money to use the services they provide.  That said, in this blog series, I want to dive into five specific practices that leading financial institutions need to implement -some traditional, others born in the digital age – in order to meet and exceed customer expectations.

• Developing a Holistic Approach to Customer Information Across the Organization- The increased number of third-party data sources means that banks have so many more sources to get insight into existing and prospective. Used in the right way the insight can radically improve the data collection and decision-making process.
• Utilizing Analytics to Streamline Offer Determination - Utilizing prescriptive analytics to evaluate all possible offer combinations and determine the ones that will maximize target performance metrics while adhering to organizational constraints.
• Decision Accuracy in Risk Determination - Utilize a combination of self-directed analytic techniques (machine learning) and structured scorecards to continually identify better risk segmentation strategies and implement those strategies in a controlled and transparent manner.
• Speed & Efficiency – Deliver an outstanding experience to applicants while improving operational efficiency and scalability.
• Digital Engagement -Increase the level of engagement that consumers feel throughout the origination and new customer onboarding process.

In the following blogs, I will focus on these further - the best practices relevant to improving the customer experience (customer information management, speed and efficiency, and customer engagement), and best practices (analytics for offer determination and decision accuracy) for improving the decisions that drive the customer experience.