I was at a conference recently where an award-winning digital bank was telling the story of how they had been able to streamline their personal lending application to the point where it took 3-5 minutes, combining around 1800 data points in mere seconds.
Most of us in finance are chasing this kind of processing speed because it delivers cost savings for our business and differentiating value for time poor customers. We’re convinced that the faster and more frictionless the experience, the better.
The unintended consequence of this banks speed was that they saw a drop off in loan completion rates – customers didn’t trust that the faster process was genuine. They then had to find a way to add friction back to the loan application to regain customer trust, and their loan completion rates.
Human experience tells us that we should trust processes that have both rigour and transparency. In some financial transactions there is a point at which the speed of digital process can start to erode customer trust and become a negative.
As we build faster digital products and customer experiences, particularly with the help of AI tools, we should remain mindful of how we are maintaining customer trust. This can be done through increased transparency of the mechanics of the process, prominent and visible security, and clearer customer communication. Even if that ends up slowing up the process.
Trust is a commodity that continues to go up in value, in an increasingly digital and AI driven world.