A digital leap forward for business banking
Like other financial institutions, the Royal Bank of Canada is charged with refreshing and confirming client profiles at regular intervals.
We implemented our new KYC widget for retail banking clients to quickly complete and confirm their profiles online (and in turn, help the bank maintain regulatory and AML compliance). After a successful uptake across digital applications, our squad was asked to create a similar digital solution for business banking clients.
Given the complexity of business structures, the gaps in business knowledge among acting authorities, and the multiple back-end validation checks that must take place, there was quite a lot to communicate and coordinate in a short flow (with a higher risk of full-stop errors outside of the client’s control).
We needed to fashion a linear experience out of a set of tangled requirements and challenges. So, we created new flexible design patterns in a widget to be ingested by different flows governed by their own distinct processes and application preferences.
Our challenge was to help our business banking clients travel through each KYC step in a single session, either in a self-serve flow or an assisted flow. We began with rounds of moderated user testing with advisors and business banking clients to understand their unique and overlapping knowledge, priorities, and challenges in the existing process.
We found some problems with language and our error handling:
The messaging skewed toward advisors in many places, resting on internal terminology and industry acronyms, which confused clients who landed on that page.
Any full-page errors did a poor job of communicating the nature of the issue and appropriate next steps.
Certain data could only be added or updated by an advisor — and if several pieces of information were missing or deficient, this would result in multiple interim pages with errors to remedy before accessing the widget.
As we investigated solutions to these points of friction, we also learned that different teams had different messaging requirements for errors depending on the data management system and advisor processes they used.
Key findings
We needed to be clear and specific without tailoring messaging to any single flow or audience, and we needed to help advisors navigate through the interim pages and fix the errors quickly.
I adjusted the voice and tone to speak to the end user (the client), ensuring we explained unfamiliar business operation concepts and tucking any advisor-specific direction into links and resource panels that could be flagged in assisted flows.
Working with our development partners, we created a new modular error page architecture and design to compile any applicable issues that must be solved in sequence. This component-based structure allowed for better information hierarchy and transparency, fewer clicks, and less navigation between systems.
Two tiers of error pages were established: one generic, which could apply to many flows. and one with specific information and instructions tied to our primary product-open use case. In cases where neither fit, we would redirect to the native error in the flow.
Solutions
Impact
Our first widget consumer was the Secure Credit Origination (SCOT) flow, who was able to use the configurable elements in a way that suited their advisor process, product requirements, and messaging patterns to fit seamlessly into their product open flow. This marked their jump from a manual, paper-based KYC process to a digital solution.
By coordinating with other teams to understand their varied needs at the outset, we were able to create a reusable widget that could conform to more and more flows while we maintained control over design patterns and the code. This KYC for business pilot was an important win on the road to securing a single voice and consistent content and design style throughout the enterprise.