The offer of online banking services is growing every day with new players entering the market, with trendy names and colorful logos. But what's behind these apps other than a simple white label offer made attractive by marketing work? Because let's face it, many of these fintechs are not banks but simple money apps.
On the other hand, there are banks like the Italian Banca Widiba, an online bank for sure, but a bank with the required skills and a real customer service set up by the bank as a priority which makes it a European reference in terms of online banking.
The Dialogue and Widdy projects that we present below are an excellent example.
Banca Widiba: pushing the borders of Italy's banking industry
A landmark for banking innovation and for the business model, Banca Widiba presented itself to the market in 2014 with a name chosen by a community of 115,000 people and a co-creation process developed around ideas and wishes of its future customers. Today the bank offers a 100% digital customizable online platform, which allows all processes to be completed in a totally paperless solution, and a network of over 550 financial advisors throughout Italy.
As a digital native bank that bases its foundations on listening to its community, Banca Widiba has always adopted a business model oriented towards ‘responsible innovation’ through the implementation of initiatives aimed at making its clients' lives better and achieving a more sustainable society.
The company favors inclusiveness and the enhancement of differences, ensuring a fair, inclusive and sustainable work environment for its 200+ workers.
In line with these values, the bank also makes use of a customer team made up of five members selected from customers, which meets when the need arises to share an important choice or a new project, allowing everyone to take part in the debate.
Always open to welcoming new technological innovations and making them available for a continuously new banking experience, Banca Widiba has made innovation its distinctive element to answer customers’ needs. At Banca Widiba, innovation helps to make the relationship with digital technology more human and to increase simplification and ensure the excellence of the customer experience, as confirmed by the bank's customer satisfaction rating of 4.86/5.
Banca Widiba makes an increasingly advanced consultancy platform available to its network of financial advisors, to respond to complex financial needs and expand the range of services useful for its customers. Going beyond purely financial aspects, these services now extend to areas such as real estate, business, inheritance and social security.
Innovation
Since its inception, Banca Widiba has pursued the vocation of innovating with the aim of simplifying people's lives and giving back value, acting like a bank in a responsible manner. Through continually integrating new smart ways of interaction, the bank seeks to shift the focus from ‘neo-customer’ to ‘neo-needs’ of a universal customer. Innovation characterizes the Widiba’s approach 360 degrees, from the launch of new products, services and interfaces, to the creation of new experiences for users, systems and technological infrastructure.
In its eight years of existence, Banca Widiba has distinguished itself as one of the most innovative banks in Italy, winning five innovation awards from the ABI (Italian Banking Association). This young bank’s trailblazing achievements in its native country include: first Italian bank to integrate account portability into its platform; first Italian bank to launch 100% digital lending; first Italian bank to certify its advisory model and financial advisors to international standards with UNI (Italy’s ISO body); first Italian bank to create a 3D virtual reality branch; first Italian bank to offer an advisory proposal in mixed reality; first Italian bank to launch a flutter technology app with a ‘chat-like experience’; and first Italian bank to integrate SPID (Italy’s Public Digital Identity System) into the account opening process.
Through its 100% digital and customizable online platform, customers can manage savings, investments and all financial needs with the greatest ease of use. Furthermore, through the application of technology, Banca Widiba makes an increasingly advanced consultancy platform available to its network of financial advisors, to respond to complex financial needs and expand the range of services useful for its customers. Going beyond purely financial aspects, these services now extend to areas such as real estate, business, inheritance and social security.
The basis of Widiba’s digital innovation is the ability to always anticipate today extraordinary trends and interaction models that will establish themselves as common behaviors tomorrow: simple, accessible and sustainable for people, capable of transforming flexibility into value, and able to create emotion, engagement, or more pragmatically a superior utility of products.
This innovative sensitivity that characterizes Banca Widiba's design approach has allowed it to remain at the top of the market, in particular the mobile banking market, using new latest generation languages, creating relationship models with the bank on the move and capturing all the opportunities offered by the digitization process that affects every user experience, not just the banking one.
The basis of Widiba’s digital innovation is the ability to always anticipate today extraordinary trends and interaction models that will establish themselves as common behaviors tomorrow: simple, accessible and sustainable for people, capable of transforming flexibility into value, and able to create emotion, engagement, or more pragmatically a superior utility of products.
Business model
Banca Widiba champions a human tech business model where the relationship with the bank is mediated by technology used to bring value to people's concrete experience. Its offer includes banking services, administered and managed savings, asset management, insurance, credit and fiduciary services to meet the needs of customers and support them in the best, most simple and direct way.
Widiba also stands out for a relationship model based on the expertise of its advisory network: it is the first bank to offer a certified global advisory service through an accredited and independent issuing body, in line with ISO international standards. The bank provides its clients with personalized support that includes all areas of financial, economic and asset planning, and has adopted an open architecture financial advisory model, without conflicts of interest.
The bank has further confirmed its social role through an extensive Financial Education Program consisting of various activities and initiatives aimed at spreading culture and awareness in the management of savings, carried out directly by Widiba and together with the network of certified financial advisors.
Banca Widiba has confirmed over the years its positioning on the market as a bank capable of listening, interpreting and responding to the economic and financial needs of people, from the simplest to the most complex, and becoming part of an evolution responsible for people's daily lives. The drivers that define Widiba's DNA are digital innovation with a view to simplification and the continuous search for excellence of customer experience, as well as more and more attention to sustainability.
Two new projects to further enhance the customer experience
For many years, Banca Widiba has established itself as a European safe bet in remote customer relations, with various awarded innovations – because it has understood that this is where the difference lies between a genuine remote bank and a simple money app. More recently, the bank has confirmed its expertise and ability to use the latest technological innovations to deliver a flawless customer experience with two projects, Dialogue and Widdy.
Dialogue is a new videocall functionality, created in collaboration with tech firm Kaleyra, that allows customers to interact with the bank and their financial advisor through a new remote relationship channel, while preserving a ‘face to face’ mode of interaction.
Widdy is a predictive virtual assistant that can anticipate the most likely questions from users and provide the information needed by the customer on its own initiative, thus improving the customer experience.
We will present these two projects in more detail below
Dialogue
The business goal
With the aim of creating a new remote branded relationship channel for its customers, Banca Widiba decided to set up a video communication system called Dialogue to enable face-to-face interaction with customers who can initiate a video call with in a simple way, directly from the bank's digital touchpoints.
The solution
Fully integrated within the home banking platform, Dialogue was designed to facilitate conversation with remote customers, ensuring excellence in customer experience, a basic element of the innovative thinking in Banca Widiba. It is a relationship mode in which the human component and competence continue to play a fundamental role, designed on the one hand to respond quickly to the new needs of customers arising as a result of the pandemic emergency, and on the other hand to satisfy, even in the post-Covid era, the needs of increasingly digital users.
With Dialogue, customers can start a videocall with Banca Widiba directly from the private area or app, and live an experience of human contact wherever they are, optimizing time. Through the platform, for example, the customer is able to see the interlocutor live and receive immediate support through innovative features such as sending documents in real time or sharing their screen to obtain targeted information and reduce telephone conversation times.
The function was created in collaboration with Kaleyra, a player specialized in multi-channel remote communication tools (audio, video, screen-sharing, collaborative whiteboards) and is integrated with the bank's architecture, guaranteeing all IT security and compliance with the most recent regulations of interest.
For Banca Widiba, the service represents not only a technological upgrade but a strategic evolution that traces the way towards a new banking model.
The results
Dialogue was launched in September 2021. The channel’s ‘phygital’ model, combining the human dimension with the convenience of technology, has so far won the approval of customers while streamlining the bank’s operations.
As regards internal processes, the tool confirms the efficiency forecasts estimated in the analysis phase: on the contact center side, in fact, it was found that a conversation via the Dialogue channel lasts on average 25% less time than a traditional call to the helpline.
Starting from July 2022, with the enabling of the outbound component, the customer availability/response rate increased.
Since the launch of service, Dialogue’s statistics show:
• about 18,000 total contacts managed
• 65 average contacts per day
• 150 contacts outbound per month for account security checks
The volume of contacts is constantly increasing, with a high level of satisfaction expressed by the rating issued at the end of the session, averaging 4.8/5. More than 30% of customers have returned to use the tool more than once to communicate with the bank.
Widdy
The business goal
The goal of Widdy, Banca Widiba's predictivity project, is to continue to offer customers a more personalized experience every day, through the ability to recognize their preferences over time, provide them with advice and suggestions with a view to information and simplification, even anticipating their needs.
The main objectives and expected results were:
• Reversal of the question/answer flow
Provide useful information before the user asks the question, through a management of the conversation with a view to caring, which anticipates the customer's need, thus making operations more efficient.
• Highly accurate profiling
Continuous learning and development of the ability to recognize the multiple variables of customers. Acquiring the right way to choose, based on various factors, the most appropriate contact channel for further study of each cluster.
• Understanding of natural language and constant expansion of the knowledge base
Constant maintenance through daily reading of the dialogues to improve not only the content but also the understanding of people's natural language and give them an experience that is as personalized as possible and close to their everyday life.
The solution
Digital data today represents one of the most important intangible riches: the information available is always growing and the analysis tools and automatic learning systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated and advanced. This allows companies to improve their decision-making processes and to create products and services that are even more suited to the needs of their target.
With these premises, the ‘predictivity’ project was born, dedicated to the evolution of Widdy, the virtual assistant of Banca Widiba. Today, Widdy not only answers the questions posed by users, but also has the ability to predict possible customer requests from a perspective of super-caring.
Thanks to this development, Widdy now adopts the new predictive intelligence feature that allows it to anticipate the most likely questions from users and provide the information needed by the customer on its own initiative, thus improving the customer experience. The system therefore becomes much more sophisticated and interactive, thanks to the continuous collection and analysis of data, allowing an ever-higher degree of personalization of the conversation based on the constant learning of user profiles and behaviors.
The evolution of the system is accompanied by the graphic restyling of Widdy and the addition of new personalization elements, such as color, style and mood. In addition, the virtual assistant becomes more humanized in both features and expressions: thanks to the studies carried out to enhance expressiveness and interaction, its ‘human’ side emerges, arousing closeness and empathy in the end user.
The results
The main KPIs that Banca Widiba has identified to oversee the function and that they monitor daily, also through a combination of internal data processing and dashboard creation, are:
• Prediction message volumes
760,859 predictive messages sent from January to December 2022
• Predictive effectiveness
98.1% predictive effectiveness (monitors how many customers have called the contact center in the seven days following receipt of the predictive message on the same topic)
• Persuasiveness of the message
22.5% persuasiveness of predictivity (detects the action the bank suggests to the customer in the predictive message while browsing)
With a view to continuous improvement and towards achieving a greater degree of efficiency, the development of the project is still ongoing today. The main areas of study are user experience (with the implementation of new notifications) and adding new topics covered by Widdy.
Find more amazing innovative projects and submit yours on the Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation awards library
