@SOLOAPI
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New York, USA
Joined March 2020
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The most instructive finding in this Conversion Scorecard is not the winner or the loser. It’s what happened at @Novo_HQ, @relayfinancial, and @rhobusiness
All asked for document-based KYC and KYB: an ID document upload, a selfie check, and an articles of incorporation upload.
They still landed in the upper half of the pack, but left all of this work on the table for the customer to do. Not just once. But with every provider in almost the exact same method.
If any of the fintechs implemented a KYC or KYB credential that let the customer skip the uploads and the liveness checks they’d already completed elsewhere, while still satisfying their own existing CIP and CDD policy, they would move up the rankings immediately.
Fewer uploads, less manual entry, fewer screens, and 4-10 minutes off total application time.
More on their opportunity at solo.one/blog/business-banki…
Insights from the loser: @Truist scored a 22.3, a record low for the scorecard, with a nonfunctional application experience.
A service-unavailable error appeared at the end, and never cleared.
This came after 31 manually entered fields across 10 screens, with no pre-fill of any kind, and after the applicant had apparently reached a pending-decision state.
The flow re-asked address, phone and SSN across screens, and repeatedly prompted a login to a Truist account the applicant did not have.
As of this review, the application's fate is unknown.
Get the full scorecard review and category rankings, plus more info on the industry wide opportunities that still exist, at solo.one/blog/business-banki…
We have a new winner (and a new loser) on conversion for business bank account applications.
Taking the top spot: Lili scored an 87.2 out of 100 with our Conversion Scorecard. Beating last episode’s winner, @Square for the top spot.
And last place: @truist unseating Slash with a score of 22%.
Watch the full review and see where the rest of the new players ranked at solo.one/blog/business-banki…
Insights from our winner: Lili’s experience took 6:47 total from the first field to an active, funded account. Why didn’t they score 100%?
A significant amount of manual data entry still existed across 20+ fields and 13 screens.
Additionally, from the applicant's seat, Lili asked for no ID document upload, no biometric check, and no document-based verification of the operating address.
This usually means those steps were delayed until later in the customer lifecycle — a pattern we see often when a fintech wants to ‘game’ the funnel, but regulated sponsor banks and their compliance requirements still sit behind the program.
The cost is that the same friction reappears after the money has been spent to open the account, and becomes a reason for closure rather than abandonment.
Had Lili pre-filled their application + fulfilled KYC / KYB steps with certificates issued by a fintech or bank that already did that work, rather than put the burden on the customer, we would see their score even higher.
Banks vs. Fintechs: how big is the customer experience gap at account opening?
This week’s Conversion Scorecard on Consumer Deposit Accounts revealed that both segments have largely solved for a frictionless consumer application. Our winner, @current, scored an impressive 86/100.
All 6 applications performed well, especially compared to our findings on business banking account experiences. Most were completed within 5 mins or less.
However, an approved application doesn’t equal an active account. Which is one of our requirements for full conversion.
Drop off still happens when you ask someone to get their ID from the other room, re-enter information you should already know, or connect an external account with a method that fails more than half of the time.
Our findings: delayed friction isn’t removed friction, and it can still cost a fintech or bank the unit economics of their funnel.
View our full Scorecard, plus real customer insights for operators preparing their customer experiences for upcoming raised bar CIP requirements at solo.one/blog/consumer-depos…
Which fintech’s application scores the highest and lowest for conversion?
Our category loser @slashapp scored 41/100.
With 56+ data fields and 8 document uploads, Slash has by far the most rigorous CIP policy we encountered.
Unfortunately these requirements shifted burdens to the customer in a way we did not experience with the other six in the category.
A standout example: a required proof of good standing necessitated account creation and payment to a government registry. Even after multiple documents, including those proving operating activity, were supplied.
Conversion should not come at the expense of compliance.
Our review of Slash’s application and where they have an opportunity to turn existing networks into onboarding infrastructure to fast pass a customer instead adding friction below:
Which fintech’s application scores the highest and lowest for conversion?
Starting with our category winner. @Square won with a score of 81/100.
How? They asked for the least amount of user effort. We were able to get a business checking account by filling out just 20 data fields without a single document upload or additional task.
This application, though quick to complete in less than 5 minutes, highlights what is a theme across fintech:
Conversion is often viewed at odds with diligence. For regulated products, removing verification steps to acquire customers is simply not an option - nor should it need to be.
We scored 7 business banking onboarding flows start to finish: Mercury, Square, Stripe, Brex, Ramp, Flex, and Slash to see which fintechs are winning on application conversion.
Top score: 81%. Losing score: 41%.
Every one solved decision speed. None truly solved the application.
The biggest driver of rank was how much CIP the customer was made to carry — which means strong KYC and KYB policies are currently being translated as friction to customers.
Fintechs still have a massive opportunity to turn KYC/KYB checks, seen as a burden today, into a ‘breeze through’ experience for customers by relying on policy-compliant verifications that have already been performed to fully remove that task for their customer.
See all the scores and our category review: solo.one/blog/business-banki…
SOLO retweeted
@SOLOAPI is ready to make X friends
Introducing the Conversion Scorecard.
When we launched KYC and KYB certificates, we had to put them to the test to see exactly how many steps reusable verifications could remove from a customer’s onboarding.
We thought we could help the banks compete on a higher conversion experience that fintechs had already figured out.
But the reality of what we found after scoring hundreds of programs: some of the industry’s best fintechs have settled for 50+ min applications.
The Conversion Scorecard was created as a diagnostic tool for operators to optimize their onboarding by pre-filling and fully removing steps when they were already completed to a fintech or bank’s standard by another program in our network of 240+ fintechs and 11 sponsor banks.
Including:
- biometrics
- identity document upload
- beneficial ownership verification, and more
Through this work, we’re helping fintechs across the country to turn their applications into a TSA pre-check experience where customers can breeze through without compromising underlying CIP requirements.
This week, we’re making our publishing our findings, with scores determined across four categories:
- user effort
- application time
- decision speed
- outcome transparency
Episode one covers the highs and lows of the Business Banking Accounts category: Ramp, Brex, Stripe, Square, Flex, Slash and Mercury.
Like this post and we’ll DM the link as soon as it drops.
SOLO retweeted
I’ve gone through so many applications this summer you have no idea…
Introducing the Conversion Scorecard.
When we launched KYC and KYB certificates, we had to put them to the test to see exactly how many steps reusable verifications could remove from a customer’s onboarding.
We thought we could help the banks compete on a higher conversion experience that fintechs had already figured out.
But the reality of what we found after scoring hundreds of programs: some of the industry’s best fintechs have settled for 50+ min applications.
SOLO retweeted
Fintechs: your compliance obligations should not come at the cost of your onboarding experience.
We applied for @FlexSuperApp.
Application time: 25 minutes.
Decision time: ~2 hours.
And the person applying on behalf of the business was never KYC’d.
KYC/KYB is one of the most important parts of building a fintech
yet most fintechs treat it as friction they need to eliminate
that is the WRONG approach
if your goal is to minimize KYB so you can onboard anyone and everyone, you're company won't last very long
compliance is one of the strongest moats in fintech
strong compliance lets you:
> work with better banking partners
> serve larger businesses
> support higher volumes
> expand into more products
> actually strive long term
and if customers are choosing your fintech because your compliance is "lax", that is not a competitive advantage
rather more of a a ticking time bomb
we've seen countless fintechs scale quickly, only to get shut down when their sponsor bank starts asking questions they can't answer
we treat compliance as one of the most important pillars inside of our company at Flex
if you want to build a venture scale fintech, compliance HAS to be one of your strongest advantages
On June 8, the SOLO Network began a structured, three-stage pilot to operationalize the bank reliance framework established under 31 C.F.R. § 1020.220(a) (6) under the observation of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, FinCEN, OCC, and FDIC.
Full press release: businesswire.com/news/home/2…
SOLO pilots bank-fintech data sharing while Treasury watches
Today in @AmerBanker by @pennycrosman
americanbanker.com/news/solo…
“The SOLO Network announced a pilot that lets banks skip a regulated compliance process by sharing the results of their customer vetting work with each other. Participating institutions can rely on customer identification work already performed by another trusted institution instead of collecting and verifying the same information again.”