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Delivering digital lending with remote ID verification
DESIGN FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION AND COMMERCE
Getting loans and registering with banks in South Africa is a long and tedious process. It involves standing in queues in branches for long hours, providing large amounts of information, filling out several forms and waiting for days to get a final confirmation.
There was a desperate need to reimagine this process and make loans accessible to businesses.
Reimagining ID verification
01
UNIFIED
PLATFORM
To create a unified customer ID across all products
05
mins
TIME TO
APPROVE
Down from an average 48 hours for new loan applications
0
mins
TIME TO
ONBOARD
Now in real-time instead of 4 days as per the current process
%
-41
COST REDUCTION
Savings per customer using digital verification
The exhaustiveness of this process is largely attributed to the regulations that financial institutions have to follow in order to validate and authenticate individuals.
‘Our Enterprise Client On-boarding’, focussed on addressing this challenge by creating a service that would enable new to bank users (individual and businesses) to authenticate themselves and become regulatory compliant in order to get a loan without having to go into a branch.
A market leading remote ID verification service
We developed Remote ID verification is a self standing service that the bank could utilise across all products that require ID&V, and by doing so enabling all channels (retail and digital) to increase efficiency and deliver a better customer experience.
Starting with lending products, new customers could validate their identify, become regulation compliant, and potentially receive a loan in under 2 hours; a process that would typically take over 4 weeks.
In collaboration with the risk, governance and leadership teams, this digital verification process set the standard for how identities were verified remotely across the entire business.
GUIDING INSIGHTS
60
USER
INTERVIEWS
New and existing
loan and account opening applicants
4
STORE
SAFARIS
In-store observations in bank branches across a range of high street banks
20
BUSINESS INTERVIEWS
Interviews with bank staff, key executives and relevant product managers
Wait periods in branches can be long and inconvenient for most users, disrupting their daily schedules. 'The process says no' culture was the biggest pain point for both customers and banks and as a result, the branch employees were not sensitive of the effort people put in to go through the process.
People are not informed about what information they need, or what process they need to go through in order to get a product - leading to delays in submission of documents and information.
Multiple products seem to cater for the same need, making it confusing for users as to which is the right product to choose. There was a validated need to restructure product portfolios in a manner that optimised business operations and helped customers with decision making.
Regulation meant that people have to provide lots of information and paperwork, making this is tedious and difficult process to complete. While there was a sense of acceptance, there was also the opportunity to create a digital experience that challenged and restructured the need for information with data, integration and good design.
DELIVERED WORK
Service blueprints of as-is process
End to end blueprints across both commercial and personal loans outlining front stage, experience friction points, product features and backstage channel integrations, operations and governance.
Customer journeys
Detailed customer journeys with key personas indicating how each usecase would unfold with this service - backed by deep research, rapid ideation, prototype testing and co-creation with both customers and business teams.
Product
propositions and concept development
Detailed prototypes of product features and front-end experience are designed responsively. We build a prioritized backlog based on these detailed prototypes to inform technical assessments, required investment, and the build plan.
Customer interviews and insight analysis
The service was designed based on rigorous discovery and testing - from one to one interviews, co-creation workshops, testing and service safaris. All the design decisions were customer-backed.
Prioritised product backlogs
Defined and prioritised the product backlog through iterative prototyping and user testing, balancing desirability, feasibility, and business viability.
Business case to secure internal funding
Developed the business case for investment by aligning commercial value, capability requirements, operational impact, and scalability to secure approval for delivery.