Suffragette Frances E. Willard declared, ?The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.? Although Willard obviously wasn't talking about digital onboarding (having died in 1898, long before the internet was invented), her vision of a frictionless world where humanity could progress unencumbered by the resistance of daily life captures the zeitgeist of today's technology sector. Historically, however, the move towards frictionless user experiences such as one-time passwords has often resulted in increased fraud. Fortunately, with the advent of phone-centric technologies, frictionless user experience and robust cybersecurity are no longer mutually exclusive.

Here are three ways financial institutions can embrace a secure and frictionless future while enabling consumers to choose how they are authenticated:

1. Make onboarding a breeze, not a chore

While KYC (know your customer) regulations and other fraud prevention processes governing the financial industry often require users to submit information to sign up for digital services, onboarding flows that require extensive amounts of form-filling and clicks cause friction and high customer dropout rates. With 59 per cent  of consumers reporting having dropped out of forms within the last month, companies need to do everything they can to ease the burden of onboarding. However, thanks to their ingenuity and UX wizardry UK-based digital-native challenger banks require significantly fewer clicks to open an account than many traditional banks while still collecting all required data.

When you consider our digital life typically starts with a mobile phone, it can provide rich insight to aid trust in the individual who is trying to perform an action. Following the lead of the digital natives, many financial institutions are now harnessing the power of phone-centric technology to turn traditional onboarding on its head. Such technology allows firms to compile consumer data from verified sources in the background with only a phone, asking for consumers to simply confirm the pre-filled information is accurate with the tap of a button. As you can imagine, this reduces friction by a significant amount whilst still meeting the stringent regulatory challenges.

2. Use biometrics to avoid password fatigue

As phone centricity continues to mature, the opportunity to positively impact a consumer's day to day financial engagement thrives. One of the more cumbersome challenges that still exists is the dreaded password. With so many different passwords to remember, some consumers find that even signing into digital accounts can be a major source of friction, which is one reason why financial institutions are investing in behavioral biometrics. In their quest to protect mobile banking and digital payments from cybercriminals, financial institutions are going beyond fingerprint scans and iris recognition and implementing more advanced behavioral biometric technologies at an unprecedented pace. The progression in behavioural understanding has meant that even the way we walk, and type, can be leveraged to remove password and login friction. The financial institutions that keep pace with these advances are the ones that will be the go-to brand.

3.  Sometimes, less is more.

Often, the best methods of authentication and garnering trust are also the quietest. While security checks that run in the background aren't flashy, they provide an elegant way to verify consumers without adding friction.

Combining slick possession checks (leveraging trust and tenure associated to the phone number), deep behavioural learning, and even prepopulating consumer details all help create the perfect method of onboarding consumers with the click of a button.

Focusing on phone-centric identity now could help firms to create a secure and frictionless future for today and tomorrow.

Author: Keiron Dalton, VP & UK Country Manager, Prove