User Onboarding and KYC is BROKEN — even for fintechs

Posted on 19 May 2021

The psychology of “first impressions” plays a significant role in a user’s mind when it comes to product adoption and usage. A user starts forming an opinion about the product the moment they start keying in personal details and uploading clunky and often unnecessary documents that are often marked “required” with an asterix. Both at banks and fintechs, product and compliance teams often debate (with naivety and passion) the balance between user experience and friction with KYC at the heart of these discussions. The result is always the same, either the controls are too loose (great user experience with high fraud rates and bad actors in the system) or too tight (clearly lost opportunity). Whatever maybe the case, either the product owner or the compliance guy is not sleeping too well.

Most Financial Services companies sit on a bottomless pit of uniquely attractive and effective banking products or ideas, but when it comes to KYC its monkey see, monkey do. If your KYC is the same as your competitors’ and you are not working on gaining creative advantage then it's only a matter of time that you’ll be playing catch up. KYC everywhere is broken and it needs to change. The end-user should not be forced to participate in this circus of KYC each time they decide to sign up for a banking product.