Going Virtual – Totally Virtual!

Dan Fisher

With over 35 years in the financial industry, Dan M. Fisher has proven himself as a leader in the financial industry holding roles as the former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and former Chairman of the ABA Payment Committee.

There is a big difference between an automated process and a virtual process. Going virtual truly means being able, to a large degree, do everything from anywhere!

Covid-19 and has compelled us to go virtual and we quickly realized that life from a laptop is not easy! The limitations and frustrations are significant, but we make do!

Most of your customers, in our opinion have it easiest because they have Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, Direct Deposit, Mobile Deposit, debit cards, the tele-bank etc… and for some institutions you can open accounts, make loans and even refi-mortgages.

For the other side of the keyboard (that is bank or credit union) it is a different issue. Just getting to the file is a chore, let alone creating documents. All of this requires the employee to be there.

Next is to have the customer execute the document. E-Sign a document? Well, here is a great example of how far the financial industry lags behind. The Electronic Signatures Act was signed into law on June 30, 2000 by Bill Clinton…. 20 plus years ago.

Most financial institutions still rely on the mail to receive paper checks for payments. Scanners to ingest documents, workstations to file scanned documents, and servers to store documents.

9/11 was followed by Check 21 which was designed to help the banking industry clear checks. It also ushered in Remote Deposit Capture for business and when combined with the smart phone, you have mobile deposit. So, what will Covid-19 be known for?

Going virtual means taking a step back and redesigning processes that totally eliminate the “physical” flow of the creation and fulfillment of loan and deposit documents. Going farther, it also means that any individual from a properly authenticated and secured device should be able to access any document from anywhere. Gone are the physical reliance on a document archive or file and in comes the virtual cloud!

Yes, financial institutions must provide cash services, but that is a very small part of the business. The new reality is that Covid-19 is only temporary, but with the right design, totally virtual banking will be able to respond to a variety of situations, circumstances from pandemics to natural disasters. Snow days have now been swapped for virtual learning days. What kind of day is in the future for the financial industry? It is all contingent on how you plan.

Dan Fisher

With over 35 years in the financial industry, Dan M. Fisher has proven himself as a leader in the financial industry holding roles as the former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and former Chairman of the ABA Payment Committee.