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Businesses use FullCircl to expedite compliant onboarding of new customers for KYC/AML, while ensuring confidence in the regulatory assessment of a counterparty. This extends to conducting checks for PEPs, sanctions & adverse media -- all made simple with the FullCircl web app or API. 

Conducting these checks with FullCircl’s Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) platform allows businesses to identify all linkages of corporate ownership and associated individuals. As a result, when a check is run against a specific entity, that check can be extended to all these related parties, returning any flags or sanctions across the entire group. Advanced datasets reveal the ultimate beneficial owner of a business, enable PEP checks, and uncover any sanctions levied against a business. 

Are you keeping up with the know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory demands of your business? 

Companies today must adhere to strict regulatory protocol to protect them from financial, legal, and reputational damage. Many leverage third party compliance checks to uncover PEPs (Politically Exposed Persons), sanctions, and adverse media associated with a company to ensure their business is better protected against risk. Sufficient KYC (Know Your Customer) due diligence is an essential part of the process. 

What is a PEP Check? 

PEPs checks investigate if a Politically Exposed Person is connected to a company. These individuals are considered high risk in the compliance landscape and often show connections to associated companies, business partners, and their relatives globally. The definition of a PEP encompasses anyone that serves a prominent public function or has relatives who are politically involved, to individuals who have been convicted of money laundering or terrorist activity. 

What are Sanction Checks? 

Sanctions checks are specialised searches that include multiple international sanction databases that identify companies and individuals who are banned from certain activities or industries. Sanction lists can involve those related to terrorism, trafficking, AML, and a variety of other factors that may be important to understand before doing business with an organisation.  This is currently a business-critical compliance requirement. 

Complex, volatile and rapidly evolving, the current global sanctions landscape, with its vast range of country-specific regulations, is a huge compliance challenge for financial service institutions (FSIs).  Indeed, the UK sanctions list now covers more than 750 of Russian’s most significant and high-value individuals, entities, and subsidiaries, effectively shutting out huge sectors of the Russian Economy. 

But while the recent spate of sanctions has drawn significant media attention, in addition to Russia and Belarus, the UK Government currently imposes a range of financial sanctions on some 22 other countries including Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Syria, and Yemen. 

What are Adverse Media Checks? 

Adverse Media checks enable businesses to quickly search a vast array of media sources for historical publishing’s which may pose reputational risk to your organisation. This can include County Court Judgements (CCJs), Gazette notices or other material captured in the media related to any entity. 

Why are adverse media checks important? 

Adverse media checks are essential for uncovering a client’s involvement with money laundering, fraud, organised crime, and terrorism. Conducting negative news screening ensures that firms do not become unwittingly involved in criminal financial activity. If involved in any of these activities, firms will face legal consequences and a stain on their reputation. 

What does adverse media screening involve? 

• Identifying which clients should be screened, and deciding how often adverse media checks should be carried out on them. 
• Utilising a comprehensive company information tool, such as FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (B.I.G™) to screen clients. 
• Reviewing and evaluating the data and identifying matches. 
• Deciding whether to continue working with a client and updating KYC systems. 

How FullCircl help can help? 

In a number of ways actually… 

• Access a consolidated view of every UK and Irish company, director and shareholder with insight you can’t find anywhere else. Plus, visually explore company hierarchies; drill into group structures to understand parents, subsidiaries and discover international linkages 
•  FullCircl’s monitoring capability means your team is always in the know. Updated as many as three times per day, our Business Information Graph (B.I.G.) feeds your team updates on the company events that matter most, ensuring your team is always on the front foot.  
• Powered by intelligence from verified and validated sources, FullCircl helps to unlock the context you won’t find anywhere else – and then maps it for you. Shareholders, group structure, ultimate beneficial owners and more, all in one place and easy to analyse. 
• Identify key events like CCJs or Gazette notices immediately by checking potential customers against global PEP and sanctions lists. Access detailed financial and historical company documents to ensure nothing is missed at any stage of the onboarding. 
•  Access HMRC Import and Export Data to understand which of their customers are trading internationally – critical for KYC, AML, and continuous due diligence monitoring, as well as identifying opportunities to support customers and cross-sell products and services. 

 Ready to learn more? 

A couple of years ago Aberdeen ran a fantastic webinar entitled Optimise the Customer Journey with Data-Driven Insight. 

The key finding of the Aberdeen study was that organisations are rich in data but insight poor – a finding that remains true in 2022. Capturing data alone is not enough, organisations must be able to take clear action from their data if they are to succeed. 

Best-in-class businesses using Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) enjoy superior results – as much as: 

• 39x improvement in customer lifetime value 
• 39% improvement in cross-sell/up-sell value 
• 2.6x improvement in customer satisfaction rates

In line with these statistics, and those from across the industry, our own experience demonstrates that businesses harnessing CLI are: 

• Reducing cost to acquire and serve by up to 80% 
• Delivering 300% more leads 
• Closing deals up to 86% faster 
• Increasing average order value by 50% 
• Increasing onboarding efficiency by 25% 
  

Turning data into actionable CLI is the vital ingredient when it comes to optimising the customer journey, and harnessing tools that drive insight-driven change is therefore key to helping your business succeed in today’s customer-centric world. 

In this blog I will give you 8 ways you can optimise the customer journey with customer lifecycle intelligence. But, before we get to that, what is customer journey optimisation and why do you need to do it? 

Defining customer journey optimisation 

Customer journey optimisation is the process of connecting and mapping customer interactions, across multiple touchpoints, to direct or influence the end-to-end experience. 

To do this well businesses must create opportunities for more personalised, relevant, and consistent messaging at every touch point with the customer. CLI is the information that informs the journey. 

8 ways to optimise the customer journey with CLI 

1. Build a single view of the customer

Creating a unified view of the customer is fundamental, and best-in-class organisations start the customer journey optimisation process by building a single 360°view of customer insights. 

By building a single customer view, front line teams are better able to understand how the purchases, interactions, and behaviours of customers will drive future actions. They can therefore target them more effectively with the most appropriate messages at the optimum time. 

This insight helps front line teams produce more effective strategies and campaigns, improves the quality of every engagement, and the crafting of relevant content that resonates with the customer agenda. 

It is important that this single 360° view is shared across the business and that everyone (from front to back office) understands the customer journey and how they can help shape customer experiences to optimise it. 

The implementation of advanced technologies, such as FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (BIG™) ingest billions of data points every day from a multitude of official and third-party sources, then matches and enriches these insights to unlock the most accurate and contextualised view of every customer– giving front line teams an up-to-the-minute view of what they need to know to build a 360° single view of the customer. 

Likewise, FullCircl Engage is powering the customer journey with enriched information, automating manual tasks, and providing touchpoints in the exact moment of need. 

Building a single 360°view is the foundation of customer journey optimisation, the benefits to name just a few being: 

• Tailored and timely communications 
• Deeper understanding customer needs, wants and preferences 
• Merging of understanding across the business 
• More beneficial relationships based on insight 
• More targeted product development 
• Greater value per customer through improved identification of cross and up- selling opportunities 

2. Do more with data – turn insight into action

It’s not the collection of data in itself that’s useful, it’s what you ultimately can do with it. 

So why does turning insight into action help optimise the customer journey? Here’s a three practical examples: 

• Find the right customers  – Make every customer your best customer.  Pinpoint your best prospects with ease and you acquire more of the right business customers with less effort in less time. 
• Onboard them faster - Easily implement your policies with our rules engine and onboard business customers up to 94% faster with automated KYC, AML, and credit checks. 
• Keep them for life - Identify and mitigate risks sooner, improve customer retention and increase upsell opportunities with in-life monitoring. 

 Translating data into CLI and enabling it to be turned into actions optimises the customer journey by delivering improved, personalised and contextually aware customer experiences that ultimately you do Better Business Faster. 

3. Maximise performance across all aspects of customer interaction

In the hybrid-working world we have endless opportunities to interact with customers, whether it be email, zoom, phone, social media, face-to-face, live chat, or app. 

According to McKinsey we now live in a ten-channel world. Today’s B2B customers are very clear about what they want: more channels, more convenience, and a more personalised experience. They want the right mix of in-person interactions, remote contact via phone or video, and self-service across the purchasing journey 

CLI is a key enabler when it comes to maximising performance across all aspects of customer interaction. Why? Because discovering useable information about customers is far less onerous. No longer do front line teams have to navigate into the depths of CRM systems and interpret some semi-relevant chart, instead CLI will simply sends you the specific information you want in an instant. Whether it be quantitative such as latest financial information, or qualitative such as an interesting nugget of information from social channels to kick start a new conversation. 

CLI offers the opportunity to analyse and curate relevant content from billions of sources to deliver usable insights to front line fingertips at exactly the moment they are needed, as well as providing a simple solution for acting on the information whether it be sharing the content across social media, sending a well-timed email, or setting up a Google Meet for a value-added discussion. 

The results for businesses optimising the customer journey by harnessing CLI to maximise the potential of every interaction are vast –  improvements in average handle time, bigger returns on marketing spend, high customer conversions and win-back rates, higher customer retention, and improved retention and upsell/cross-sell opportunities. 

4. Interact with customers in a more contextually aware manner 

Nothing will turn a customer off quicker than offering them irrelevant products or services. 

For any customer interaction to succeed it must deliver the highest degree of relevancy possible – it must be relevant to the customer need and what’s happening in their business right now, it should augment or improve their business and their relationship with yours. 

Importantly front-line teams must understand and demonstrate why the product or service will make a difference to the customer – why they need it, why it differs from other products or services they currently use or might consider using, any gaps in their business it will fill, how they will interact with it, how it will deliver value. 

True contextual relevance comes from having the power to determine in advance what a customer needs, and what product or service will have the greatest impact – from reactive, to proactive, to predictive! 

Prediction is a key front-line skill, and CLI is making life easier by helping to identify patterns of event types, market challenges, and new opportunities even amongst the longest term and best understood customers. 

Offering the opportunity to not only predict need, analyse what solution will have the greatest impact, and even the most likely response. 

The result – improved understanding of relevance and therefore enhanced ability to interact with customers in a more contextually aware manner and optimise the customer journey. 

5. Deliver consistent messages 

Customers expect and demand superior experiences on a consistent basis, businesses today cannot go to buyers with conflicting messages delivered by different teams running separate playbooks across multiple channels. 

Everyone needs the same view of the customer journey if they are to optimise it – that single 360° view again. Doing this without access CLI is going to be a challenge. But more than that it requires all parts of the business to work together, again technology is an enabler. 

Technology is rapidly transforming sales, marketing, business development and customer success alignment. Smart use of CLI tools can improve understanding of the customer, understanding to Total Addressable Market (TAM), improve lead segmentation, qualification and prioritisation, aid successful conversions and pinpoint new opportunities to engage and add value throughout the customer journey. 

But more than this smart use of technology can bring every part, and every individual within a business closer together and in doing so ensure they better serve the customer and optimise the customer journey. 

Best-in-class businesses are furnishing front-line teams with a single 360° view of the customer by ingesting and matching billions of data points and providing them with tools to consistently address customer needs at each stage of the customer lifecycle in order to anticipate enquiries and offer lightning-fast responses and recommendations, improve inbound and outbound, and boost customer success. 

6. Predict and model behaviour to map the customer journey 

CLI tools can enable front-line teams to construct models based on patterns of event types and customer attributes, that correlate more or less with eventual success. 

When they know exactly what the next steps are, they can better predict success and avoid failure, resulting in more sophisticated sales strategies, campaigns, and product or service development. 

As time goes by and the volume of data improves precision and predictive capacity, these models will advance, enabling faster and more accurate predictions of customer needs, pain, market challenges and opportunities – before customers themselves even realise what lies ahead – not just optimising the customer journey but influencing the direction of travel. 

7. Empower sellers – give them the insight they need to do their job 

CLI can help find the right customers, onboard them faster and keep them for life, and importantly reduce cost to acquire and serve. 

Utilising CLI tools to automate key activities such as information gathering, research on buying behaviours and trends, due diligence, leaves front-line teams free to undertake more strategic decision making and human-touch relationship building tasks with an even greater level of clarity. 

CLI helps sellers get more creative, make better management decisions, and spend more time doing what they do best – engaging with customers. 

Take a sales team of 200, each earning an average salary of £50k per year. If each spends a typical 14% of time every day on research and administrative tasks then that translates to £1.4 million in unnecessary costs to the business each year. Time and money that could be better spent optimising the customer journey. 

8. Gauge performance to exceed expectations 

A great front-line professional knows their strengths and weaknesses and finds ways to fill the gaps. 

They adopt new behaviours, seek out opportunities to direct their strengths to best effect, and learn how to manage their weaknesses to work in the best interests of the customer. 

They track their own performance and exceed expectations by analysing which aspects of customer interaction influence customer behaviour. 

CLI provides an ideal set of techniques with which to analyse and model the actions and outcomes behaviours with each customer, in order to pinpoint those which are most successful. 

Likewise, the same approach can identify the opposite actions or inactions that typically correlate with failure. 

This information can then be used to improve behaviours, correct mistakes, adapt selling style to each customer, and better align with customer needs. 

Start optimising the customer journey with FullCircl 

I’ve outlined eight ways you can optimise the customer journey with CLI. 

Forget standard customer data. We’ll bring you a multi-dimensional view that combines advanced data ingestion, validation and augmentation with real-time news, social signals and more. All neatly delivered via a web app or API. 
 
The end result for your business is that you can move fast. 

 FullCircl offers the perfect platform from which to start your optimisation journey – just look at the results achieved by BT Local Business as a result of embedding FullCircl CLI within their sales and business development strategy. 

Sustainability – including climate, environment, social inclusion, and social equality issues – is fast becoming the most pressing issue facing the world, impacting all aspects of society and societal systems, including financial systems. 

Increased regulation, governmental and fiscal policy change, and perhaps most importantly rapidly evolving consumer attitudes and public perceptions are all accelerating the urgency for action. 

A long-term, sustainable approach centred around strong environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles is more important than ever. 

There is a huge opportunity for banks, insurance institutions, and FSIs that lead from the front. 

Those that invest in the transition, innovate, educate, and fund the future will differentiate themselves. 

In the summer of 2021, FullCircl held an interactive webinar attended by 70 FSI leaders to discuss how to create investment and build businesses that not only generate wealth but also produce positive impacts on society and the planet. 

The highlight of the event was hearing from Gillian Lofts, Global Sustainability Finance Leader at EY, and Rob Keegan, Regional Manager at Triodos Bank, the leader in banking products and services that make a difference to people and the planet. 

Here’s what they had to say… 

What are the key issues shaping the sustainability agenda in FSI? 

Firstly, regulatory pressure. 

Regulators increasingly see ESG issues as systemic risks to the global financial system, therefore there’s a huge focus on the ability of central banks in particular, and FSIs more generally, to better identify and quantify sustainability risks and develop frameworks to tackle them. 

In tandem with this, there is increasing governmental and fiscal pressure. Policy changes across all aspects of ESG concerns are continually nudging banks, insurers, and financial services providers, and indeed society at large, to make the changes needed now for a greener and more inclusive future. 

Finally, the FSI sector is facing pressure from the general public, customers, and investors, who expect them to take the lead, by implementing the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals and the targets set out by the Paris Agreement. 

They’re demanding more accountability, more transparency, and expect their banking providers to use the power of money to create positive change, with ESG right at the core. 

In 2021 financial services had reached a digital inflection point because of Covid19; perhaps 2022 is the year it has reached a sustainability inflection point. 

Respondents to an FullCircl survey suggest this is the case, with 82% agreeing that sustainability is a key issue for future growth and profitability in the FSI sector. 

Cutting through the misconceptions around embedding ESG 

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that embedding an ESG strategy costs more. Recent EY research in partnership with Royal London however suggests the contrary is true. 

The study reviewed more than 30 academic and other published papers as well as 2,000 global empirical studies across a 25-year period and found that corporations with strong ESG ratings perform better than lower credentialed peers on measures such as return on equity and return on assets, alongside stronger stock market performance and reduced share price volatility. 

Of course, early adopters may suffer inevitable first-mover costs, but making a strong ESG pledge now and setting out a firm sustainability strategy will pay dividends, even in just the course of the next 5 years. 

What are the risks of not driving ESG change? 

Perhaps the biggest risk of doing nothing is reputational – and the risk is real. 

The Zero Carbon Business Partnership, has indicated that 71% of SMEs couldn’t name a single web source for advice on decarbonisation and1 in 3 businesses are still not familiar with the phrase ‘carbon zero’. 

The Bankers for NetZero Project is working with Government to educate this 71%. 

FSI organisations that don’t act will eventually run out of road. The volume of risk around ESG issues will keep growing and become an acute reputational issue. 

The Government and the public expect the FSI sector to adapt, innovate and manage ESG risks; they must lean into the problem, assist the transition, and use their unique position to connect with all sectors of business and society to drive change. 

In doing so they’ll realise the opportunity to better shape future reputations, by understanding how ESG issues should inform their future approach, and what action to take. 

In FullCircl’s poll, respondents overwhelmingly agreed that the board of every FSI organisation should have continuous involvement in setting the sustainability agenda. They should lead from the top. 

Making ESG thinking fundamental to all decision making 

Leading the transition and funding the future means educating and engaging stakeholders, both internal and external. 

92% of respondents to the FullCircl poll agreed culture change must come from within, and that employees must be engaged sustainability efforts. 

Having a highly educated and motivated team and embedding ESG thinking is key to advancing the FSI sustainability agenda, achieving the greatest possible impact, and creating genuine and lasting change. FSI organisations must ensure that ESG risks are the lens through which decisions are made. 

Likewise, they must work to understand the ESG goals of their customers, seek out opportunities to educate, enable and fund change, and always ensure that ESG issues are on the agenda of every customer meeting. 

Putting ESG thinking at the heart of FSI 

Most FSI providers still don’t have a centralised ability to collect and analyse ESG data. This is down to three factors: 

1. ESG data takes many forms and can be found in many places – internal, external, structured, and unstructured 
2. ESG data changes quickly and constantly – it’s hard to keep up, let alone analyse and react 
3. ESG data is big data – analysing such data from news, social, IoT, and building a picture across the entire financial services chain, from suppliers to customers, is a huge undertaking 
   

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence (CLI) must therefore play a central role – from collection and triage of ESG data for due diligence and compliance, surfacing insights to sales and relationship management for prospecting, engagement, and onboarding, KYC, KYS, to ESG-informed C-suite decision making – if FSI organisations are to move in the sustainable direction future success demands. 

How FullCircl can enable you to hold meaningful ESG conversations with your clients 

Customer Lifecycle Intelligence from FullCircl provides instant access to sector news, which can be focussed on key topics such as pollution or cybercrime for example. This provides a rich selection of market news stories that can be used to inform customer engagements and trigger meaningful conversations. 

FullCircl Engage provides following tips, such as an ability to receive alerts from the Environment Agency, which in turn could trigger new business opportunities or uncover potential risks. 

By applying FullCircl’s taxonomy of 2,250+ topic filters to a list of target companies, FSI organisations can receive highly relevant, accurate and refined ESG insights that can be used to personalise messaging, improve client engagement, or generate content ideas. 

With CLI tools from FullCircl, this can be done at scale across an entire client book, giving users the ability to intimately understand their customer’s world, sustainability risks and opportunities, and use this to provide a better service through tailored solutions that both assist the transition and fund the future. 

Want to find out more? 

Relationships are like investments, says international author, Anthony Lannarino. The greater the investment, the higher the potential return. 

Neglecting a client for eleven months out of a twelve-month annual contract, for instance, would be a fairly poor investment. 

It’s all well and good showering the client with attention in the weeks leading up to renewal, but that’s a bit like claiming the value before you’ve tried to create it. 

Hardly the smoothest route into a conversation about money. 

So, what does a well-invested relationship look like? 

1. You always know what’s going on

What’s the biggest issue currently affecting companies in your client’s sector?

If you don’t know, it’s time to do some research. Understanding what matters to your client means that you can address their concerns and help them find a solution. 

Using Customer Lifecycle Intelligence tools such as FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (B.I.G™) and FullCircl Engage means that you get real-time updates on your chosen businesses and sectors so will always have the latest information at your fingertips. 

2. You are a problem solver 

If you know the issues impacting your client you can start to work out ways that your product can solve them. But that’s only part of the story. Don’t try to solve all of their problems with your product; sometimes advice or a referral to another business is the best solution. 

It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you can’t help, but know someone who can, their details are going to be valuable to your client – don’t be afraid to share useful information, even if it doesn’t directly lead to a benefit for your business. 

3. You listen 

There’s a lot to be said for listening – many experts suggest that you should listen for 70% of the conversation and only talk for 30% of it. 

Don’t assume that if you’re not talking, you’re not seizing the business opportunity; remember, if you’re not talking, you’re listening to your client and learning more about them. 

4. You show integrity

Deliver what you said you would when you said you would. If you said you would call the client at 9.15am on Friday, do it.

Whatever you promise you need to deliver. If you don’t, not only will you give them a reason not to trust you, but you’re also giving them a reason to go elsewhere. 

5. You ask the right questions 

Don’t ask the client what they know about your business or product; ask them what’s going on in their business. 

Not only will you find out useful information, but it can also be a great way to start a conversation that could help you spot an opportunity. 

Asking people when they joined the company and who recruited them will tell you lots about their position and standing within the organisation. 

6. You are persistent, not pushy 

There is a fine line between keeping the channels of communication open and calling a client so much they start to avoid you. 

If you’re going to get in touch have a reason to do so – an email congratulating a client on a big business win is better than a cold call. Put yourself in their shoes, how do you feel when businesses are in contact too much? 

Even if it’s not a sales call, communication should be regular but not annoyingly frequent. 

7. You are honest 

You can’t always answer every question you’re asked. 

You can’t always deliver an order when you said you would. 

But what you can do when things go wrong is be honest about it. 

Don’t try to bluff – if you don’t know something, admit it and offer to look into it. If things won’t happen when they should, let the client know and keep them informed about when they can expect things to be back on track. 

Ready to invest? 

We can help you build strong customer relationships that lead to business growth. 

Arrange a demo of FullCircl’s Customer Lifecycle Intelligence Platform. 

The relationship between insurer and broker has always been a mutually beneficial one, with brokers providing insurers with a valuable route to market, and insurers underwriting the risks for customers.  

As the link between the insurer and the end customer, brokers determine which policies are best for their clients and work hard to secure the best quality cover at the right price. Commercial insurance is often seen as complex to understand - especially for small businesses who don’t have the in-house expertise. Therefore, brokers also play a key role in providing peace of mind for SMEs that they have sufficient coverage for both current and emerging risks at the best price. 

But there’s a problem: all too often brokers struggle to serve small and medium enterprises (SMEs). 

With 99% of companies in the UK being SMEs, it should represent a huge opportunity for brokers, however the challenge when it comes to serving SMEs is one of cost-effectiveness. Lower value policies mean lower margins, so time spent servicing a particular SME quickly becomes expensive.  

But this is beginning to change. Automation and data science are transforming the market. 

According to CB Insights Insurtech raised a record $15.4 billion in funding in 2021, nearly double 2020’s levels, developing technology that helps support the important insurer-broker relationship, rather than disrupt or displace it.  

This has led to an influx of new solutions that automate time-consuming tasks, help brokers lower the cost of serving commercial customers, scale up their offerings and provide a better client experience. 

SMEs want a digital experience, as well as a human touch 

Business customers expects a service that is fast, frictionless, and personalised. But due to the challenges faced by regulated businesses, they often end up optimising processes rather than maximising customer relationships.   

According to the Insurance Brokers Global Market Report 2022, combining AI and human creativity will power the Intelligent Broker, an automation program for the insurance industry. Brokers will be able to resolve complicated obstacles, produce innovative products and services, and join or build new markets. In addition to this, the insurance industry will improve customer service and prevent customers from fraud. 

E-trading is making it easier for brokers to serve SMEs 

So, what are insurers and brokers doing to improve the way they work together and with SMEs? Much of the focus is on digital platforms and electronic trading (e-trading), which are automating tasks that were previously done manually. 

E-trading systems have been in use for more than a decade, allowing brokers to enter detailed information about their clients and receive a fast response from insurers. The advantage of e-trading is that it helps brokers provide better service to SME clients by streamlining processes and reducing costs.  

What’s changed over the years is the way e-trading services are delivered and how they connect brokers to insurance companies. In the past, e-trading systems were basic in function and often connected to just one insurance company: brokers entered client details and waited for the insurer to provide a quote.  

Today, e-trading platforms have become the primary method for doing business in commercial insurance, connecting brokers with dozens of insurers in a matter of minutes. 

Deeper company insights lead to better results 

The challenge for brokers with SME customers partly because it is time-consuming to gather all the information necessary to develop a full view of the risks they face.  

To help insurers to underwrite more effectively, e-trading platforms are now using APIs to connect to data sources that provide enriched company information on SMEs.  

By tapping into company insights like group structure, financial profiles and real-time credit information, brokers and insurers gain a clearer picture of how a company operates. This results in a better underwriting process and provides more accurate pricing. Even more importantly, it enables brokers to trade more policies and ultimately results in SMEs getting the coverage they need in a fast and efficient way. 

When it comes to supporting SME’s FullCircl has brokers covered 

FullCircl is helping brokers sharpen their focus on the companies that fit their specialism or verticals.  Part of that is helping them get the right data on small business customers.    

We recently partnered with Codat, the universal API for small business data, to provide seamless integrations to the accounting platforms used by 84% of UK SMEs.  Combining this data with FullCircl’s Business Information Graph (B.I.G™), Engage monitoring and business development applications, and Connect rules-based automation engine means that brokers get an instant real-time 360° customer view. 

Find out more by downloading our Insurance Broker Toolkit.  Get commentary on the biggest issues impacting the broking industry, market research, and free guides on handling underinsurance and the hard market. 

Neobanks may be best known for their consumer offerings, but they’re rapidly gaining traction in business banking. 

Digital-only neobanks have seen surging growth and adoption, with a big spike since the pandemic.  It is expected that the rate of Neobank growth will continue to accelerate as the digital model plays a critical role in the future of business banking delivery in the new normal. 

The neobanking market expects to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.7% from 2021 to 2028. By 2028, the estimated market size of the neobanks will be $722.60 Billion 

A recent study by Savanta found that 10% of start-ups currently have their main bank account with a Neobank, 1 in 6 businesses are already using digital-only banking solutions, and importantly in terms of future growth, 40% of enterprises say they would seriously consider, or possibly consider a digital-first bank. 

What is a Neobank? 

Neobanks are 100% digital banks. Typically cloud-based, they incorporate disruptive technologies such as big-data analytics and artificial intelligence to deliver apps and online platforms to support their customers, rather than traditional physical branches. 

We’re talking about the likes of Monzo, Moneze, Atom Bank, Starling and Revolut – Neobanks themselves that are evolving from their earliest iterations as e-money offerings just a few years ago, to fully licensed banks today. 

Indeed, new neobanks are emerging all the time, such as London-based neobank Kroo which has recently secured a full banking licence from the Bank of England. Or Winden a neobank that offers financial products for digital entrepreneurs which has raised $5.3million in funding in 2022. 

With banking and financial services in a race to embrace and lead on new technology, customer-centricity, and streamlined processes, it looks like Neobanks are here to stay and that they’ll increasingly become a formidable sector in the business banking industry. 

Traditional banks v Neobanks 

So what can incumbents – traditional banks and perhaps even challenger banks – learn from Neobanks? 

Some incumbents have started to develop their own digital-only brands, whilst for others, the Neobanks’ rapid growth has been a wake-up call to modernise and discover new ways to improve customer experiences and deliver customer value. 

Of course, incumbent banks do have some advantages over Neobanks: 

• Strong brand equity 
• Trust 
• Longevity 
• Established customer relationships 
• Massive amount of customer data 
• Existing revenue streams 

However, this starting point of competitive advantage will quickly be eroded in a rapidly accelerating digital age if they fail to modernise and deliver the same customer value and experience that digital-first banks and digital-only banks deliver. 

Remove the burden of legacy 

As true digital natives, the agility and speed of Neobanks are due to the absence of legacy technology and the burden of complex internal processes and operations. 

They’ve invested heavily in data science and the latest advances in technology, so how can incumbent banks keep pace when legacy technology and antiquated processes make for often frustrating customer experiences? 

Legacy is only an issue if you let it be. Digital transformation is not purely about replacing outdated technology or improving the customer journey with a sleek front-end. 

It’s about incorporating the use of customer lifecycle intelligence to deliver a deeper understanding of the customer ecosystem and importantly, ensure that intelligence and insight flow across the organisation to improve risk management, speed up decision making, capitalise on new opportunities for advanced products and services, and achieve the ultimate goal of personalised banking experiences. 

It doesn’t have to be a big bang. It’s about embracing a digital-first strategy and finding the right customer lifecycle intelligence platform that will integrate seamlessly into your business and technology stack to drive both operational and behavioural agility. 

API-driven customer intelligence flows, data ingestion and matching for a 360° customer view, rules-based automation to pre-screen and onboard new customers quickly, continuous monitoring and compliance and high-value in-life support; the list goes on… 

Retire siloed decision-making and complex onboarding processes 

Many Neobanks have capitalised on providing slick digital onboarding processes and user experiences – placing them at an advantage during the pandemic. 

Incumbents must therefore reconsider their onboarding models to accommodate rising expectations for a simple and smooth onboarding experience. 

Business banking is far more complex than in the consumer sector, but investment in AI-risk analysis, fraud detection and open banking provides the ability to quickly harvest KYC data which means Neobanks are now snapping at the heels of their more experienced counterparts. 

Whilst incumbents have also invested heavily in data and technology solutions and built huge teams of compliance analysts to process and interpret the data created, their siloed decision-making, and analogue processes mean customers can still be subject to an incredibly disjointed process. 

Businesses can be actively sold to by one part of the bank, only to then be delayed, have the deal restructured, or maybe even be rejected by another division within the bank. 

Now more than ever banks need sophisticated compliance tools and procedures. The importance of harnessing automation, data and customer lifecycle intelligence cannot be underplayed. 

Digitisation and automation of risk management and KYC can enable incumbents to create real customer value by improving the efficiency and quality of risk decisioning, providing better monitoring and control and reducing the workload on onboarding and compliance teams by ensuring only the right clients are worked on. 

Harness data-driven flexibility and adaptation 

Incumbent banks have built their product and service offerings over many years and may not be as adaptable or flexible as a Neobank that curates products and services based on demand and need. 

What they’ve done so successfully is determine what customers actually need, spot gaps in the market and pain points within existing offerings, and then engineer solutions that differentiate their products in creative ways to attract clients by improving service. 

Incumbents can do exactly the same. 

But first, they must free themselves from a product-centric view, and instead start with a rich understanding of customer needs and how to align them with their bank’s capabilities. 

The wealth of information at an incumbent bank’s disposal represents a truly unique advantage, especially when combined with 3rd party and unstructured data from across the internet and social media. This can offer richer insights into customers, their ambitions, their needs and their strategic priorities. 

Importantly, this data can feed the analytics which guides the development of ever-more intelligent products and services, ensuring efforts are always focussed on the right place, at the right time. 

Build value-driven experiences and personalisation into customer journeys 

By focusing on innovation, speed, and differentiation fuelled by open banking, AI and API-enabled architectures, neobanks have the tools to focus sharply and address in a very agile way the actual needs of customers and their pain points. 

The result is that they offer experience-based value which serves to completely differentiate their offering. 

Today’s corporate and business banking customers know what they want and how to go about getting it – whether they be a high-net-worth individual expecting an in-depth conversation, a nimble SME seeking out slick digital experiences, or a large corporate looking for a blend of both for the ultimate in personalisation and efficiency. 

Keeping pace isn’t just about offering great service, but also requires a strategy that puts customer lifecycle intelligence at the heart of the business – from the frontline, to back-office operations and compliance/risk management.    

Customer propositions can no longer be static and one-size-fits-all—they should be intelligent and tailored.  So, for incumbents, successfully integrating personalisation must be a top-line agenda item. 

They must harness advances in data science and clever rule-based decisioning to build a deeper and more accurate understanding of every customer’s context, behaviour, needs, and preferences. 

This understanding, in turn, empowers an ability to craft intelligent, personalised offerings within customer journeys. 

The big lesson – Neobanks lead with customer intelligence 

McKinsey have on many occasions reinforced the importance of adopting a holistic, data-driven approach. They suggest suggests three major steps incumbents must take: 

1. Implement a real-time, enterprise-wide data infrastructure: that captures virtually all data points for a given customer’s relationship with the bank’s various divisions, and supports a unified customer view encompassing all channels, journeys, and products. 
2. Consolidate data on a central platform: to ensure that these enterprise data sets are utilised effectively and widely across teams, aggregate the data captured from multiple internal and external sources into a central customer data platform. 
3. Automate governance and controls: to ensure business and technology teams have ready access to appropriate data sets, with the necessary controls for security and permission where needed. It is also important to ensure that the appropriate data are available for decisioning, at the right time and in the right form, to the various AI/ ML models used by internal teams (from customer service to product management) to support intelligent, highly personalised interactions with customers. 

FullCircl provides one seamless solution to all three of McKinsey’s recommendations  

FullCircl is the leading customer lifecycle intelligence (CLI) solution that tackles banking’s most complex and high-value challenges: 

• Win the right customers - find, engage, and win the right customers for your business, products, and risk appetite. 
• Accelerate onboarding - fast, frictionless onboarding with automated AML, KYC and Credit checks that surpass both customer and compliance expectations. 
• Keep customers for life - Deliver proactive in-life customer care as new risks and opportunities emerge. 

We bring together… 

• Super-connected enriched data and insights on companies and the officers inside them – FullCircl Business Information Graph and API 
• A configurable, low-code decision engine to screen and onboard in seconds based on your specific risk profiles – FullCircl Connect Rules Based Decision-Engine 
• Continuous monitoring and timely intelligence for proactive first engagement and remediation – FullCircl Engage Monitoring and Business Development Applications 

…to help you compete on a level playing field with neobanks. 

To find out more get in touch