Digital onboarding has become a strategic issue for retail banks. Facing ultra-agile neobanks, traditional institutions struggle to convert effectively online.
In this article based on our webinar with Charline Doche and Jean-Marie Fouquet, we explain how banks can improve their onboarding process, reduce user friction, and boost their conversion rates.
Why retail banks struggle to convert online
While digital onboarding is at the heart of customer acquisition strategies, the performance of traditional banks lags behind:
- 75% of online account openings are captured by online banks.
- The average opening time: 7 days for retail banks, compared to 1 day for digital natives.
- Conversion rates are often below 20% on online customer journeys.
The issue is not investment. Retail banks have the tools: electronic signatures, video identification, OCR… But they struggle to orchestrate them into simple and efficient journeys.
Obstacles to effective digital onboarding
The causes of this drop-off are often structural:
- An overly complex offer Too many products = too much choice = friction in the onboarding tunnel.
- An ill-adapted omnichannel culture Processes designed for face-to-face interactions do not always translate well into digital self-care.
- A fragmented organization IT, compliance, UX, product… often poorly aligned on a single goal: conversion.
What online banks do better
Digital players convert better because they operate with a product growth mindset. Concretely, this means:
- Customer journeys designed per product and per target (e.g., account + card)
- An architecture built for automation and scalability
- Rapid iteration on conversion drivers (A/B testing, UX, number of steps…)
Their promise—”open an account in 5 minutes”—is kept. And that is what makes all the difference.
How a retail bank can catch up
At QuickSign, we believe the right reflex is rapid and measurable experimentation.
Launch a conversion-oriented MVP We support several players in launching a 100% digitalized journey on a simple product:
- White-labeled
- With an onboarding process under 5 minutes
- Compliant from day one (KYC, GDPR, DORA ready)
- And above all: connectable to, yet independent from, the legacy IT system.
Objective: test, measure, learn… before rolling it out globally.
From onboarding to retention: industrializing the customer experience
A good onboarding journey is not just an attractive “front door.”
It is an internal transformation driver: more data, lower costs, better responsiveness to fraud, and onboarding that meets current market standards.
Conclusion: digital onboarding is not an option, it’s a business driver
Retail banks can still regain the upper hand, provided they:
- Step away from heavy, rigid frameworks
- Accept iterating under real-life conditions
- Industrialize what works
At QuickSign, we build journeys with our clients designed to perform in the real world: one with internal requirements, regulatory constraints… and increasingly demanding customers.
Written by Nicolas G.
