The Fix for Business Account Opening is Fewer Steps, Not More

In the business world, when a long-established process needs to be revitalized, we seldom think about scrapping the whole thing and starting anew. Undertaking that much change feels arduous, so why reinvent the wheel? We look for things to improve, what else we can add that might help solve the problem.

For business account opening, many banks look to add additional processes to fix what they perceive as the onboarding problem. A new checklist is added. A list of approvals that must now be passed is implemented, or even more steps in the review. This certainly makes the account opening more thorough, but in no way makes it faster or fixes the stall.

We’ve talked a lot about the issues with business account opening recently, and why it’s seen as broken by so many banks: disconnection between stages, lack of ownership, lack of visibility. We also know that fixing this problem won’t be done by just doing the broken process more carefully. Something must fundamentally change.

What “Fixed” Doesn’t Look Like

The obvious instincts to call something fixed are more in line with “slapping a Band-Aid” on the problem. The bank may launch a nicer, more visually appealing form. They could consider making the application shorter, to try and improve their abandonment rates. They might decide to beef up back-office staffing, in an effort to keep applications moving along.

But none of these efforts touch the actual failure points. They miss the handoffs where information is lost, or priorities are reshuffled. They lose sight of what happens when an account comes in as a lead from marketing, goes on to onboarding, fraud review, and eventually funds.

What “Fixed” Will Look Like

One flow to see it all. When all of the bank’s processes and systems interconnect — the KYC, fraud screening, funding all talk to each other —  instead of in independent silos. Only then can the banker see where the application sits, and more importantly, WHY it sits there. That’s the onboarding flow Linker Finance builds for banks: KYC, fraud screening, and the full account funding workflow, running against the same set of data, instead of three separate systems. Whether they’re waiting on legal business documents, sitting in a flagged fraud review, or waiting on additional signing parties, next steps are clear and solid. No more need to monitor a status when you can manage a pipeline instead.

Take the stalled legal document, for example. Today, that might sit invisible to all parties besides the compliance team responsible for reviewing it. The banker might see a “pending” status, but the applicant may see nothing at all. In a fully interconnected flow, the banker can see exactly what piece of information is missing and who it’s waiting on, without having to spend unnecessary time researching multiple systems or tracking down the internal owners.

The changes don’t only impact the bank and their workflow. The applicant experience is enhanced, too. In the current, average scenario, they may submit their application and then wait in silence for an update that the bank has to manually provide. Now, the waiting is significantly reduced, because nothing sits idle in a sea of interdepartmental handoffs. Similarly, where the applicant would’ve normally experienced frustration and a fading of trust when they were asked for the same document multiple times, by multiple departments, all the files and information stay in one place. One where anyone in the flow can access, as needed.

What Gets Removed, Not Added

The fix for business account opening simply can’t be adding more processes and more review steps. Instead, the banks taking the time to peel back the layers of what they’ve built over the years, removing the seams between systems that weren’t natively built to talk to each other, have the right idea. This work will be critical, regardless of which core sits underneath it all.

To learn more about how Linker Finance supports community banks eliminate customer friction and manual work when onboarding new business and commercial customers, keeping them competitive in today’s market, contact us today. We’re here to help.

‍