“Everyone knows how to take a selfie,” begins Simmons Bank Chief Digital Officer, Alex Carriles. “There has been a sea change with how consumers are interacting with their financial institutions. Our goal is to meet consumers’ desire for digital account opening, while simultaneously improving security.”
Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, with branches in 6 states, Simmons Bank has been voted one of America’s Best Banks by Forbes for three consecutive years. Recently, Simmons Bank has focused on improving their digital experience to capture a larger share of Millennial and Gen Z customers. Millennial customers, now entering their wealth building years, are particularly interested in digital account opening, with 66% claiming it was their preferred onboarding experience with their financial institution.
In early 2021, Simmons Bank turned to JHA OpenAnywhereTM from Jack Henry to craft a seamless digital account opening experience for their customers.
Enhancing accountholder convenience, satisfaction, and retention
After launch of the solution, the Simmons Bank team layered on additional third party checks, effectively reducing synthetic identity fraud to near zero. On the frontend, the customer merely takes photos of the front and back of their ID, and is led through a liveness check via selfie.
But as customers are onboarded, IDScan.net’s backend systems query DMV and Identifraud databases to confirm the prospective customer’s identity, address, and account eligibility. “The security checks we’re performing at account creation are more stringent than what you would do even in-branch,” continued Carriles. “Fraudsters need to have physical access to an ID to open an account, and each layer of security creates an additional speed bump that deters scammers.”
The onboarding process takes less than 5 minutes, from initial engagement through account opening. Since launching OpenAnywhere, they’ve reduced fraud to nearly zero. Onboarding abandonment is also down, with more an improved percentage of customers completing the account setup process.
“Every time we’ve had a feature request or need to improve our platform, it has been in production two weeks later. For us, that commitment to continuous improvement is key.”
Alex Carriles, Chief Digital Officer
Simmons Bank
As a regional bank with a growing U.S. footprint, Simmons Bank sees opportunities to bring the identity proofing technology powered by Jack Henry and IDScan.net offline and into their 230 branches.
Fraud has been reduced to near zero with new identity verification process
“Using the information stored on the ID’s 2D barcode eliminates mountains of paperwork for our tellers. By bringing ID scanning in-branch we can allow our employees to put down their pens and spend more time actually getting to know new customers,” predicts Carriles. He envisions a future where IDs are verified using authentication hardware, and information from the ID such as first name, last name, and address, are pulled automatically into the Simmons Bank system with 100% accuracy.
Simmons Bank is a strong example of a regional bank dedicated to secure, digital innovation, without losing their personalized service and community commitment.
Interested in improving your digital account opening process?
For Jack Henry customers, visit jackhenry.com.
For other banks and FI’s, visit idscan.net.
