Simplifying global expansion for financial services

Going global is easier than ever. Although digital channels simplify international expansion, it doesn’t imply that successfully entering new markets is simple or easy.

Each market has its cultural values, standard procedures, legal requirements and best practices to optimize performance. Without that local knowledge and expertise, your new customer acquisition efforts can suffer from slow onboarding, mismatched customer data and poor conversions.

Global success is about understanding each market and adapting your processes to fit the needs of those customers. It either takes expensive trial and error or partnering with organizations that already know the markets in which you want to do business. The right partner will guide you through all the intricacies and complexities of each market and help speed and optimize your global expansion.

Clarifying compliance requirements

A core requirement for any financial service organization is compliance. Compliance is perhaps the most complicated aspect of entering new markets, as each market has different laws and regulatory environments. Understanding a new set of due diligence, reporting and risk standards can take a considerable amount of time, especially as there’s little room for error.

Numerous questions about the initial onboarding come into play, including:

• What are the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements?
• What are the necessary Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies?
• What information do you need to collect, and how do you store it?

Other considerations such as risk assessments, monitoring and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) procedures also need practical answers to ensure a robust compliance program that can withstand regulatory scrutiny.

Compliance costs can be substantial and, if performed ineffectively, can slash profitability. Consider the remittance sector, where “the cost of transferring money is not the most expensive part, but rather compliance costs. It is inherently difficult to ensure money is being sent compliantly in multiple jurisdictions 24/7, which is why 20-40 percent of the remittance cost is due to compliance alone.”

Getting expert advice from partners who understand what regulators expect helps deliver regulatory approval, control costs and build internal stakeholders’ confidence in the program.

Preventing fraudulent activities

Fraud prevention is another aspect of your customer acquisition program that will significantly affect profitability. A new market can mean new fraud schemes, and new ways to protect the organization might be necessary.

Again, local market expertise can substantially improve the detection of fraudulent accounts and patterns. Simply put, the more transactions that are analyzed, the more data is available to see anomalies and unusual activities.

Expertise in what to watch for, best practices, threshold settings and other ways to optimize parameters only comes from direct knowledge of the customer base. The line between a good customer and a bad actor can often be deceiving, and you don’t want to be letting problematic accounts in — or creating unnecessary friction for real customers.

Expertise comes from experience. Financial service expansion with the benefit of knowledge from the beginning is much more likely to succeed.

Maximizing digital onboarding performance

You’ve done your homework and have a great product that fills a financial service need. Your potential customer is all ready to sign up. And then comes the moment of truth.

If you give them a slow, cumbersome sign-up process, all the hard work, time and money you’ve spent to expand can fall flat. On the other hand, if you deliver a relatively quick and seamless customer onboarding experience, they are much more likely to begin transacting and become a good customer.

What works in one market might not work in another. Little subtleties on the information you request can make a big difference in response rates.

Data collected at account creation often varies depending on the country, language, cultural values and conventions, unique alphabets, syntax, forms, formats and input limitations. Each address, name, date-of-birth, email, phone number or other data point can have multiple input variations. To maximize your ability to onboard new customers, your identity verification provider needs to consider all these possibilities.

The form design and speed of onboarding can also impact whether the customer abandons or continues.

You can discover what works the hard way by testing and tweaking your process to figure it out on your own. Or, you can work with experts who understand the different markets and how to get the best results.

At Trulioo, we’ve been helping our clients onboard customers globally for ten years. We know different markets and how to optimize performance for various industries, audiences and risk approaches. We understand KYC requirements, fraud prevention measures and optimizing performance for multiple countries; we are the global leaders in identity verification.

We’re not a one-size-fits-all or one-market company. We provide a holistic solution that adjusts easily for different scenarios. Part of what we offer is the advanced technology you’d expect from a well-funded market leader that works with Fortune 500 companies, global banks and the most prominent fintech companies on the planet:

• A single API that allows you to connect to over 400 databases worldwide
• Robust security protocols, including ISO-27001
• Global KYC match engine that uses AI to deliver best-in-class results
• Multiple solutions including Identity Verification, ID Document Verification, AML Watchlist Screening and Business Verification

But just as important for your international expansion is access to our identity verification solution experts. Their market knowledge combined with numerous use cases enables them to work with you to create onboarding workflows that:

• Maximize conversions
• Minimize risk
• Dynamically adjust based on your criteria
• Optimize the speed and the customer experience

Every market is different. Every industry, use case, organization and customer is a unique set of variables for your onboarding workflows to consider. With deep expertise and advanced technology, the opportunities for an excellent onboarding experience multiply — and your business reaps the benefits.

With Trulioo, you get a partner for your global expansion that knows the market, whichever market you want to expand to. And, we know what the people in that market want from their onboarding experience. You won’t need to integrate and work with new vendors for every market you decide to enter. You only need one integration for all your global identity verification and customer onboarding needs.

With Trulioo, global expansion is simpler, faster and more effective.