Singapore’s OCBC Bank launches digital account opening service for large corporate clients
The new service simplifies the account opening process for multi-national companies and other large corporate customers.
Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. Limited (SGX:O39), or OCBC, has announced the launch of a digital account opening service for multi-national companies (MNCs) and other large corporate customers.
The bank notes that setting up an account for MNCs and large corporates can be rather tedious. As part of the process, these large organisations are typically required by banks to fill in a physical application form that could be as long as 40 pages with more than 200 data fields.
The main advantage of the digital service is the reduction of the time needed to set up an account. This can be shortened from months to weeks, in some cases by as much as 75%. The number of data fields has also been reduced from more than 200 to less than 50. Accuracy of data and documents submitted has been improved substantially. The chance of human error occurrence is minimised.
There are two key features of the digital account opening service:
- Digital connectivity: Information related to the Singapore operations of the large corporate is auto-populated from the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority’s (ACRA) business registry database, via a service provider. Where the same information is required in multiple sections, the entry made in the first instance is auto-populated subsequently.
- Dynamic advisory: Based on the company profile and information provided by the applicant, the digital service advises the applicant on the specific documents needed to be submitted thereafter to complete the application. These documents include articles of association, board resolutions and certificates of incumbency.
The launch of the new service underlines OCBC Bank’s digital push. In July this year, for instance, the bank unveiled its plans to convert bank tellers into digital ambassadors and service executives. OCBC Bank expects to see half of its bank tellers upskilled to perform higher value-added financial services as it installs the latest ATMs and digital service kiosks at 35 of its branches by 2020.
