With 2023 underway, savvy lenders are looking for mortgage tech that will help them navigate the economic headwinds this year is slated to bring. Efficiency, cost savings, and better collaboration are top of mind for many lenders. But which part of the mortgage journey can they digitize?

In today’s rapidly transforming technology environment, financial institutions (FIs) must think beyond businesses or individuals as a customer and truly see them as a Universal Customer. A Universal Customer is someone who has been empowered with such an excellent banking experience that they want to stay with that one FI for all their financial needs. While Universal Customers deeply trust their FIs, they also have other expectations for service, including, speed, simplicity, and accessibility. To attract, retain and grow these valuable Universal Customers, financial institutions must use digital mobility, artificial intelligence, automation and data analytics to learn more about what customers want at different stages of their financial lifecycle.

Allied Irish Banks, or AIB, is a financial services group based in Ireland whose core services are Retail, Business and Corporate Banking. As one of the largest financial institutions in Ireland, the Bank serves its 2.8 million customers at over 200 branches throughout the country.

The market is constantly changing as customer needs evolve and technology advances. As financial institutions adapt to keep up with those changes, the need for a seamless, digital experience grows, too.For most institutions, transforming your infrastructure takes time and hard work. That’s why it’s so important to know where your institution currently is and where you hope to be as your digital transformation strategy evolves. This kind of early preparation can help you navigate the challenges of a transformation and improve your chances of long-term success.

As your financial institution considers the tools, technologies and partnerships that will help you scale in the years to come, there are a number of factors to consider when evaluating a potential vendor.AgilityAs our digital and economic landscape continues to shift, financial institutions must be prepared to evolve alongside a society that expects instant results and the frictionless ease of automation. Post-pandemic, consumers are less likely than ever to go to a physical branch, so a robust online presence has become a vital component to banking.With the market constantly in flux, choosing an agile vendor who can grow and adapt with you through an ever-evolving market is more important than ever. Many of the FIs who have implemented nCino have experienced this benefit firsthand, and chose nCino in part because its nimble, scalable single platform solution helps them manage their clients’ needs and enables their employee to provide more effective customer service, no matter where they’re working.

As consumer expectations for simpler, more convenient, and personalized financial services increase, Financial Institutions (FIs) must find new, innovative strategies to create user-friendly digital experiences. Here are four ways nCino’s Deposit Account Opening Solution can level up your FI’s deposit account opening experience:1. Elevate Your Identity Decisioning and Funding ProcessesAre your FI’s identity decisioning and funding processes cumbersome? Do they result in significant abandoned applications? Do your employees lack compliance controls and transparency? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, we’ve got good news for you.

Embedded finance is positioned to become the number one distribution channel for financial services within the next 10-20 years, which means the time to start preparing for the revolution is now.Today’s customers want seamless, digitally-enabled buying and lending experiences. Embedded finance has emerged as a convenient solution to meet these needs. With its buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) method of financing that eliminates the customer’s trip to the bank, embedded finance has quickly grown in popularity as a way for customers to finance items at the time of purchase.

Data and analytics have been buzzwords for years in the financial services industry, but only recently have banks started using data analytics to meaningfully drive revenue and improve the customer experience. Today, banks on the leading edge are using advanced analytics to inform and prioritize among marketing campaigns, and then automate those campaigns so that dozens, if not hundreds, can be run simultaneously by financial institutions of any size.Growing revenue in a responsible way has always been a challenge for banks, but it’s not the growing part that’s hard. A bank can grow revenue by simply easing underwriting standards and boosting loan volumes. But this increases credit risk, leading to higher charge-offs in the future. Thus, this is not an ideal growth strategy for long-term success. The challenge is to grow revenue responsibly, ideally in a way that doesn’t require regular infusions of capital.

The COVID-19 pandemic became a catalyst for the digital transformation of financial institutions worldwide, making technologies such as the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) essential components for business and success.