Issuing new credit cards over 50 percent faster with Axway
Consumers expect to be able to reach their bank on any device, at any time. As a leading digital bank and credit card issuer, Advanzia Bank strives to exceed its customers’ expectations. With 2.6 million customers in Germany, Luxembourg, France, Austria, Spain, and Italy, the bank offers credit cards under its own brands and as white-label solutions for more than 280 global companies, associations, and financial institutions.
Johann Blais, Head Enterprise Architect at Advanzia Bank, elaborates: “We understand that delivering an excellent onboarding experience is crucial to winning and retaining customers. Over the years, we’ve invested heavily in streamlining the digital journey for account-opening. We succeeded in making it very easy for new customers to provide their information. However, behind the scenes we relied on batch processing, ink signatures and manual work, which limited how quickly we could issue and activate new cards.”
In total, it took around two weeks for Advanzia Bank to process customer applications and then as long as two months for customers to sign and return their paper contracts in order to start using their new cards. Keen to accelerate this process, the bank aimed to fully digitize customer onboarding.
Previously, Advanzia Bank used custom-developed systems to orchestrate this journey, including key process steps such as credit scoring and know-your-customer (KYC) checks. The organization decided to reimagine these manual processes as automated, real-time workflows.
“We work with almost 300 partners, and we knew that going through a complex change-management process with each of them individually had the potential to stall the project,” says Blais. “Years earlier, we made the strategic decision to adopt the Amplify Platform as our single point of partner integration. Because all 280 of our partners engage with us via the same API, we knew we could switch them all over to the new onboarding process simultaneously when it was time to go live.”
Shaping seamless journeys
As the first step on its digital transformation journey, Advanzia Bank replaced custom-developed systems with a highly automated orchestration workflow built on the Pega Platform. In parallel, the company shifted timeconsuming nightly batch processes to real-time services hosted in the Azure cloud. With the Amplify Platform, Advanzia Bank can integrate with cloud services in a standardized way, helping it to cut time to market for the new onboarding experience. And built-in analytics from Axway makes it easy for the bank to detect and resolve technical issues rapidly — helping it to ensure always-on customer services.
“We refreshed practically every part of our onboarding engine,” explains Blais. “As a result, credit scoring and KYC checks now happen in seconds, not hours.”
With the move to real-time services, Advanzia Bank makes heavy use of cloud capabilities, including AI solutions such as Azure AI Search. By leveraging the latest in AI innovation, the bank gains much greater processing speed.
“We make extensive use of AI in the customer application process,” says Blais. “For instance, we use AI and machine learning for our internal scoring models that enable us to accurately predict applicant creditworthiness. By using the Amplify Platform to securely integrate with Azure, we can execute key onboarding processes in real time.”
Delivering real-time service
Now when new Advanzia Bank customers provide their information via the bank’s online portal, the new onboarding process instantly kicks in. From there, automated processes run creditworthiness, KYC, and other checks within seconds and generate a fully digital contract for the customer to review and sign directly from their device. After customers have digitally signed the contract, Advanzia Bank issues and mails the new card.
“Since we launched the new onboarding process, we’ve cut the average onboarding time by over 50 percent,” explains Blais. “We’ve also reduced the abandonment rate for new credit card applications by 15 percent. That represents around 45,000 extra customers each year. We’ve also seen a 10 percent boost to conversion rates, which goes to show that customers really do value a smooth onboarding experience.”
Faster onboarding is a win-win for Advanzia Bank’s partners and customers, and eliminating paper also brings sustainability advantages for all stakeholders. Blais confirms: “ We’ve eliminated the need for customers to print and mail signed contracts, which will save hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper a year.”
Planning the next step
Advanzia Bank is now looking to the next phase of its transformation journey, which will see the bank make the transition from physical to virtual cards. In the months ahead, the organization will be able to offer approved customers near-instant access to credit, slashing onboarding times further still.
“From the very beginning, we decided that APIs on the Amplify Platform would be the foundation of our banking architecture,” concludes Blais. “The success of our customer onboarding transformation shows that our decision has paid off. The Amplify Platform enables us to transform our processes while limiting the impact on our partners and service providers. Thanks to our partnership with Axway, we can continue our transformation and deliver even greater value to our customers and partners.”
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