2018’s Retail Bank of the Year, UOB, was once again awarded the highly sought-after title for 2019 by The Digital Banker. Thursday, 26th September saw the Singaporean Bank secure eight awards at the highly competitive Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards 2019.
The Bank has come a long way since its inception in 1935 as a domestic Singaporean bank. With a Market Cap of $32.9 Billion as of May 2019 and just over 26,000 employees, one may deduce the once small, local bank has now gained international clout as a digital pioneer and has transformed into a force to be reckoned with.
2018’s Retail Bank of the Year, UOB, was once again awarded the highly sought-after title for 2019 by The Digital Banker.
Through the development of truly innovative service and product offerings, to a pure-play mobile bank serving ASEAN digital generation – UOB is poised for even further growth and a clear contender in the race to become the region’s leading bank.
The Digital Banker awarded the leading Asian Bank with eight awards, each of which was rampant with prominent global competition.
On the night, UOB took home the winning trophies for: Best Current Account, Mortgage Product of the Year, Excellence in Digital Wealth Management, Best Automated Advisory Service and Outstanding Social Media Campaign. The bank also received highly acclaimed for Best Savings Account, Loan offering of the Year, Best Data Analytics Initiative and Outstanding Staff Training and Learning & Development Program.
Award Winning Customer-Led Product Innovation
Being the first in the industry to launch a digital solution for a mortgage product, UOB has evidently set precedence in the industry to do right by its customers by leading the market in being an innovative leader and continuously developing the best product solutions for its customers.
UOB is the first bank to include its agency partners into its UOB Home Solutions, coming up with a solution to create an all-inclusive property market ecosystem for all the stakeholders – one in which the bank collaborates with business partners rather than competing with them. On the product innovation front, UOB is also the first bank to offer customers a seamless digital experience by creating a paperless home loan application process. UOB Home Solutions includes the first bank-backed property valuation service, enabling customers to receive an accurate valuation of their property and a loan-to-value estimation.
UOB Home Solution was designed to target and alleviate the pain points faced by customers and agents in seamlessly acquiring and executing the acquisition of their dream home. With the UOB Home Solution, the bank has simplified every step of the home buying process. A typical customer’s buying journey has been insurmountably reduced by being able to receive a home loan approval within 15 minutes – compared to the industry average of T+3 days.
Since the launch of the bank’s online approval facility in October 2018, close to 400 applications have been received, with just under $200 million of sales coming through the online channels. As of 31 December 2018, 3000 registered agents have generated close to $20 million of new sales to UOB through the GetBanker app. The property valuation tool also covers up to 90 per cent of all Singapore properties ensuring that customers can acquire a valuation for their properties. By going digital, the bank was able to save up to 1000 man hours every month.
A Purpose-Built Digital Wealth Management Platform to Solve Real Pain Points
UOB Portfolio Advisory Tools (“PAT”) – is a purpose-built digital wealth management platform consisting of a suite of three complementary digital tools – Portfolio Tracker, Portfolio Insights and Portfolio Explorer.
Portfolio Tracker tracks one’s portfolio health with an overview of their entire product holdings, together with gains and losses.
Portfolio Insights provides insights on how the bank’s recommended portfolio compares with the customer’s current portfolio. This component of the platform showcases a holistic risk-return analysis and robust scenario simulations by stress-testing portfolios in various significant market events. Portfolio Explorer is the first-of-its-kind digital interactive simulation platform that allows for a 360 evaluation of a customer’s portfolio across various risk and performance parameters – dynamically, in real-time with a live market data feed.
Portfolio Explorer is the first-of-its-kind digital interactive simulation platform that allows for a 360 evaluation of a customer’s portfolio across various risk and performance parameters – dynamically, in real-time with a live market data feed.
Client-centricity is at the core of everything UOB does and the launch of PAT was no different.
Prior to the project, the bank conducted extensive research with its potential wealth management clients and existing clients which uncovered the following pain points and insights:
- Customers lack the financial confidence to make sound and informed investment decisions.
- They are not able to fully grasp their investment portfolios and thereby have full control over where they track towards achieving their financial goals.
- They are not able to fully visualise the recommendations that the bank presents to them in a clear and concise manner.
The benefits have been tremendous eversince this project was executed and launched. UOB Portfolio Advisory Tools have excelled in the following metrics:
- User Adoption
- Client acceptance and sales conversions
- New client acquisition
- Enhanced customer experience
A leader in Automating Advisory Services
Bond Explorer is a first-to-market bond portfolio analytical and comparison tool that features numerous exclusive functionalities aimed at resolving customer pain areas whilst being unique to UOB. It contains a wide range of information with:
- Daily automated market data and information.
- Interactive price charts with full price history since bond issuance.
- General bond information such as daily price, issue date, maturity date.
- UOB-unique data points – product risk rating, strategy classification (Core/Tactical).
- Coupon information such as coupon amount and frequency.
- Yield and duration information from yield-to-maturity, yield-to-call to effective duration and so on.
- A full coupon cash flow table that showcases all coupon payments at different points in time since bond.
Travel Spend Monopolies Card Holders’ Spend – UOB to the Rescue
Travel and savings are two ever-present needs of UOB consumers that are seemingly mutually exclusive. According to internal UOB data, travel was the top spend category for its card members, accounting for more than 10% of total spend from 2016 to 2018.
The yearn to fulfil travel wanderlust has never been stronger. Within the next decade, millennials spending habits will form the backbone of the future economy as they will become the largest segment of the local workforce. Millennial spending currently accounts for 20 percent of UOB’s total card spend and one in three millennials in Singapore currently banks with UOB.
The bank expects the number of our millennial customers to increase as it introduces more products and services that meet their lifestyle and banking needs.
Ms. Jacquelyn Tan, Head of Personal Financial Services at UOB Singapore said, “As we constantly review our customers’ needs and how might we serve them better, we recognise that there exists a gap for a product that can adequately reward our globetrotting consumers when they spend, save and bank”.
Within the next decade, millennials spending habits will form the backbone of the future economy as they will become the largest segment of the local workforce.
Retail Bank of the Year 2019
UOB has once again, demonstrated its unbound efforts in driving innovation across customer experience, loans, cards, wealth management and digital banking. The bank showcased its customer obsessive culture through the provision of numerous first to market products and services which have become intrinsic to their customers’ everyday lives. 2018-2019 have been years of product innovation and customer experience transformation for the bank – UOB’s hard work has clearly paid off and 2020 awaits!
>> To read more about this story and other exclusive features about the digital banking landscape, download the latest issue of The Digital Banker Magazine HERE.
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