TransUnion tackles credit application dropouts, fraud

With the demand for digital access increasing dramatically due to COVID-related restrictions, TransUnion is helping address not only consumer pain points but also the rise in fraud.

Already available in other TransUnion markets, TransUnion Seamless Onboarding has been recently launched in the Philippines. This will help both financial institutions and consumers experience an end-to-end digital (or digital-assisted) onboarding process that delivers a friction-right experience, while increasing conversions and loyalty, reducing fraud, and driving operational efficiencies.

Holistic solution

“Improving customer journeys may seem like an insurmountable task. Financial institutions are often reliant upon legacy or multiple systems and have to choose between maintaining those systems and developing new platforms. At TransUnion, we have focused on designing a service that delivers a full range of solutions that are easy to integrate for our customers, and our flexible orchestration and plug-and-play offering is configurable to meet evolving business needs. The service helps institutions rise above new challenges, including competition from progressive fintechs, and help them create an environment and experience where in the end, both the provider and the consumer win,” said TransUnion Philippines President and CEO Pia Arellano in a press statement.

Delivered via a single platform and a single application programming interface that significantly reduces integration time and effort for financial institutions, TransUnion Seamless Onboarding encompasses identity verification, fraud prevention, credit risk decisioning, and service orchestration to bring a differentiated and holistic solution to the Philippine market.

As an example for consumers, this means being able to instantly apply for finance products like credit cards via mobile or at a branch near the point-of-sale and getting approved soon enough to be able to snag a store promotion for 0 percent installment exclusive to that credit card.

Large dropouts

Even before the pandemic, financial providers in the Philippines faced large dropouts during onboarding both offline and online, largely due to inconvenient, confusing, and time-consuming application processes and slow turnaround.

Recent studies by TransUnion Philippines found that most banks’ digital channels use application forms that are very cumbersome and provide a poor and lengthy customer experience. When applying via a website, the process could take over 40 minutes, as entry fields are often redundant.

In many instances, if applicants lose internet connection midway while filling in a form, they often need to restart the application from the very first page. Completed applications, meanwhile, require the consumer to go through a lengthy and manual verification process involving multiple interactions with the bank agents. At bank branches, queues tend to be long and the verification is done manually or sometimes over the phone. On the other hand, turnaround times from credit application to approval take eight days or longer for 42 percent of credit cards, 51 percent of installment loans, and 91 percent of auto loans.

Customer safety and convenience

Digital application processes that are not fast and easy and that don’t effectively balance the consumer experience with risk management can cause financial institutions to lose large numbers of potential customers, especially amid a fast-growing local financial services industry driven by technology trends.

TransUnion Seamless Onboarding eases the burden of manual review and stitched-together onboarding setups from multiple providers. With this, financial institutions can deliver a streamlined experience wherein consumers can complete their application in one sitting — anytime, anywhere — without compromising their privacy or security.

Customer safety when doing online transactions is even more important now. A recent report by TransUnion titled “Suspected Online Fraud Originating from the Philippines Doubled During Pandemic” found that suspected fraud originating from the Philippines during the period from March 11-April 28 increased by 119 percent compared to the pre-ECQ levels.

With TransUnion Seamless Onboarding, the Philippines’ financial services industry will be able to address the increased risks of fraud that come with the rise in digital transactions as people continue to observe social distancing.