In Finance, words like ‘digital transformation’ and ‘disruption’ are often thrown around without much weight, but what do they really mean? For banks, they usually involve a lot of work and a lot of costs, often requiring firms to replace multiple legacy systems, which have been stacked on top of each other haphazardly for years. All too often a digital transformation project only delivers a portion of what was planned, as projects go over budget and take too long.

In general, banks and building societies (or any financial firms) avoid additional digital transformation costs on top of those required by regulators, and areas like customer service have tended to fall by the digital wayside.

What firms need is a way to implement new services without disrupting their technology and day to day processes. The most practical way of achieving this is to begin on a stand-alone basis, to quickly prove their value, and once proven, to integrate permanently into the technology stack. 

We spoke with Nivo, a Manchester-based FinTech, which provides a secure instant messaging platform for customer communication. It solves a fundamental issue faced by financial firms when onboarding new customers, having to comply with KYC whilst supporting a digitised customer journey. 

Nivo focuses on the specific problem of customer onboarding using a modern architecture based on Scala, and APIs which allow for easy integration. Its instant messaging platform has been implemented at more than 10 financial firms, with impressive results – reducing customer onboarding from 6 weeks to 15 minutes. 

Most users begin using the platform on a stand-alone basis. In just a day they can get set up, with no technical effort and zero upfront costs.  

Nivo founder Mat Elliott commented, “There is a massive need for easily integrated services like ours, especially amongst the smaller financial institutions, which are typically wary of implementing costly tech projects. Our focus is to prove the platform's benefits first, quickly and cheaply, with minimal disruption. Once clients have seen the value that Nivo delivers with their own eyes we support them with a straightforward integration process.”