Onboarding in 2025: Strategies to deliver a standout customer experience

In an increasingly competitive and congested financial services industry, with legacy banks and fintechs going head to head, improving the customer onboarding experience is key for those serious about growth.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of UK Finance or its members.

With it costing on average five times more to source a new customer than to keep an existing one it’s critical to put time and resource into delivering a great customer experience from the outset, at the onboarding stage, to ensure high rates of customer conversion. Particularly as recent research by Deloitte has found that 38 per cent of all new banking customers abandon the account creation process if it takes too long.

Address autocomplete

To seamlessly collect correct contact data at the customer onboarding stage use an address autocomplete or lookup service. These can provide accurate address data in real-time by providing a properly formatted, correct address when the user starts to input theirs – vital when 20 per cent of addresses inputted online contain errors. They also cut the number of keystrokes required when entering an address by up to 81 per cent. This speeds up the onboarding process and diminishes the probability of the user not completing an application or purchase. 

The good news is that first point of contact verification can be extended to email, phone and name, so this valuable contact data can also be verified in real-time. This data supports the wider ID verification process, and ongoing accurate and fast personalised contact with customers. 

Electronic ID verification (eIDV)

Data hygiene and verification practices on their own aren’t enough to deliver KYC, KYB and AML, and prevent fraud. Those in financial services should also use an electronic identity verification (eIDV) platform. These can be accessed via any delivery mechanism – SaaS and cloud API - and can be scaled up or down according to the needs of the user. 

These ‘always on’ tools can, in real-time, cross-check the names, addresses, email addresses and the phone numbers provided by prospective customers when remote onboarding, providing a good customer experience, while helping to prevent fraud. For best results, it’s recommended to source an eIDV platform with access to billions of consumer and business records from reputable sources from around the world, such as from government, utility and credit agencies. This ensures an effective ID verification and therefore global customer onboarding service. 

Utilising such a tool is considerably quicker, more accurate and cost-effective way to undertake ID verification and prevent fraud than manual checks, while helping to provide a standout customer experience. Also, the technology requires no additional staffing or training costs, and minimises the risk of human error.

These background data checks are far simpler for the user to engage with, as they only need to provide a name and address, rather than uploading an ID document. This means potential customers are much more likely to complete the onboarding task, instead of scrolling on when confronted with more complex document verification tasks. Additionally, the cost of eID verification background checks are generally far more cost effective to licence than alternative ID regimes.

In the digital age services like address autocomplete and eIDV are available that help financial institutions to improve their competitive edge by speedily onboarding customers in real-time, aiding them in the delivery of a standout customer service, while also meeting global KYC, KYB and AML regulations. Providing a consistent positive customer experience online from the outset supports the building of stronger, more resilient long-term customer engagement and revenue well beyond 2025.