Imagine a world without online banking. It wasn’t that long ago that we had to go to a branch to fill in a home loan or credit card application, mail cheques to pay for our bills, or pay someone back in cash rather than a one-click bank transfer.
Today, online banking is the second most popular online activity for Australians (the first is checking email). In the UK, Marketing Week ran a banking consumer survey in July and found that the most important criteria for a financial provider is easy and convenient online banking.
Now, let’s stop a moment. This is in an industry where security and identity is everything. Yet the banking industry is able to conduct billions of transactions online, set up new customers, and allow us easy and transparent access to our financial information.
It’s faster, more convenient – and it has also allowed banks to grow their revenues and reduce their costs. But more on that later.
If we can apply online for a bank loan, surely students can apply online for a university course? Perhaps there are a few things the education sector can learn from the banking experience.
Customers want 24/7 access and real-time updates. Today, we expect to be able to bank online whenever it suits us. With online applications, even if your international students are on the other side of the world, they can get an immediate receipt. Even if it’s 3am in the admissions office. And they can check how their application is tracking, while you are sleeping.
Smart forms save time. Online forms can be pre-populated with existing data, or the answers to previous fields. This saves the applicant time. It also means the form is correct – they have to answer all the relevant questions to proceed. And it’s legible, which saves processing time for application approval.
Online applications equal self-service. In the banking world, customers can sort out their own credit card increases, loan approvals and card activations. That leaves call centres free to deal with more complicated enquiries.
It’s just so much faster. It used to take 14 to 22 days for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to approve a home loan top-up. Now that they use online forms, it can take just 15 minutes.
Online applications decrease costs. CBA have found they now have a much lower cost per transaction. Plus, they have higher rates of accuracy and greater staff satisfaction, because they are avoiding routine transactions (like agents and students calling about their application progress).
They also increase revenues. The rate of investment in CBA’s Term Deposits, one of the first products online, has doubled. In the US, one of the top five banks has decided to go completely paperless. By reducing their courier bags by 75%, and increasing online cross-selling and branch productivity, they have already saved over $13.5 million per year and increased new sales by up to 5%.
Paperless transactions can be good marketing opportunity. In the UK, First Direct (part of the HSBC group) conducts 86% of all transactions online. A few years ago it began a program called the Virtual Forest, where a real tree was planted every time twenty customers switched from paper statements to online.
If you’d like some more information on how AppManager can fit into your admissions system and give your website online application functionality, please contact us.
