Lloyds to accept electronic photo ID docs for online account opening

Lloyds Banking Group is introducing a new service for customers to upload photos of identification documents for online account opening without the need to visit a bank branch.

7 comments

Lloyds to accept electronic photo ID docs for online account opening

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

The new electronic identification and verification checks will start to be rolled out to customers from next week, beginning with those looking to add an additional party to an existing account.

The system - which provides real time feedback as to the readability and suitability of documentation - will also be made available to all savings and credit card customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland by this summer.

Group director, digital, Miguel-Ángel Rodríguez-Sola said: “The industry wide Current Account Switch Service has already demonstrated a positive effect on switching in UK banking, and we believe this use of digital electronic identification technology can have an additional beneficial impact. Hundreds of thousands of customers will receive a smoother, speedier and more convenient experience in opening their accounts with us using the new service.”

Last month, Barclays Bank rolled out a system which enables mortgage brokers to take photos of paperwork for immediate upload to customer case files.

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Comments: (7)

Paul Love VP Business Development at Konsentus

With all the electronic touchpoints avaible that provide more reliable and less fraud prone identification this initiative just seems like bringing an irrelevant process not quite up to date. 

A Finextra member 

yahoo !   ;) 

A Finextra member 

Good move. Banks should be where the customers are and get rid of all primitive flows & processes. I guess there were some (or more than some) resistance within the bank's internal organisation to this change but even so it seems like the innovators managed to overcome the problem :)

One point is not very clear if this is for NEW ACCOUNT OPENING for NEW (prospect clients) or EXISTING Clients. If it is for Existing Clients only, I hope it would extend more to cover the totally new ones. We can do more than Using qualified digital signature (very low penetration challenge) or delivering the documents via courier - I think.

Dean Wallace Director of Consumer Payments Modernisation at ACI

This just makes good sense. I agree with Tolga, knowing Lloyds this will indeed have taken some serious internal debate and strong CX leadership to overcome the change in risk mgt. Starting with Existing customers first may well have been the negotiating point so the process and system can be checked for holes before rolling out wider. Given the Account Switching service this development puts in place a process for fast turnaround. That just leaves the bank to work out how to get the customers to actually want to come to Lloyds. No small feat.

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

I recently came across a mobile-only bank - I forget the name - which allows account opening by clicking a picture of a Drivers License from a smartphone camera. Anything else from Lloyds would lack the "aha" effect. After all, banks like StanChart have been accepting scanned images of larger-sized documents like passport for over a year now.

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A Finextra member 

It's a big step by Lloyds as Dean & Tolga mentioned and hopefully we will hear more over the coming months. It's definitely missed the aha or the first mover advantage by more than a decade but at least they are trying to catchup. It's just a beginning rather a big one within Lloyds. Cheers!

Richard Sanders Payments Specialist at Hermosa Consulting

KYC has been touted as one of the reasons why branches survive. This move by Lloyds following on from their recently announced investment in digital suggests they do not subscribe to the same bank ethos as Santander recently advocated.

Having acquired Halifax they also probably have more branch duplication on high streets than the other banks so expect them to be selling some redundant branch sites soon - possibly to allow them to pay dividends to their long suffering shareholders on an ongoing basis?

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