Title	PAPERLESS
Brand	ACTIVOBANK
Product/Service	BANK ACCOUNT OPENING THROUGH TABLET
Category	A01. Innovation
Entrant Company	ACTIVO BANK Oeiras, PORTUGAL
Advertising Agency	ACTIVO BANK Oeiras, PORTUGAL
Media Agency	INITIATIVE Lisbon, PORTUGAL
Production Company	TRIX Lisbon, PORTUGAL

Name	Company	Position
Duarte Durão	Nossa	Managing Director
Nuno Cardoso	Nossa	Creative Director
João Sacadura	Trix	Account Director
Manuel Sacadura	Trix	Art Director

The Brief

In Portugal, to open an account in any bank, the customer had to fill several forms, mandatory by the Portuguese Central Bank. This used to take precious time to the customer and to the bank as well (around 20 min per account). On the other hand, the customer had to bring home a signed copy of all these forms, increasing resource consuming, consequently affecting the environment. Besides all that, Portugal is a very legally restricted country and one of the main difficulties was to convince the regulator that this solution was viable and safe. To bring this innovation to the market we commissioned a leading project team comprised of the Innovation Office, the Remote Channels Division Manager and the Operations Division Manager that worked in full cooperation with the Bank’s legal and compliance office as well as with IT development Teams. The project team consisted of 3 people (not full time) with Engineering and Operational Skills while the supporting teams consisted of around 8 people, committed according to the project needs. The technological solution for signing in the iPad was provided by a third party IT consulting company, but the integration development was totally implemented in-house.

ActivoBank is a bank designed mainly to self-directed customers that embrace the use of new technologies and want both simplicity and convenience. One of the bank’s objectives is to transform the banking experience into the innovative experience these customers want. In this spirit we introduced a paperless account opening process. It basically consisted in switching “real paper” for digital documents that the customer signs on a iPad using a special pen guaranteeing an improved customer experience. In addition, this innovation allowed us to drastically reduce the amount of paper used in the account opening process as well as to to further simplify the back office processes, eliminating a lot of risks concerning paper handling (i.e. digitalization of documents, lost documents, misplaced mail,…). This initiative is directed to our customers and is fully aligned with the strategic objectives of the Bank, namely simplification of processes, innovation and customer growth. It is, so far, a unique technology in Portugal as we are the first Bank to submit such a project to the regulator and get their full approval. Portugal has a very restrictive regulatory environment for opening an account (when compared with the majority of the European countries), so we had to design everything to comply with the extensive regulation while providing at the same time an improved account opening experience to our customers. The future roadmap is already established and comprises a fully mobile solution for account opening and the expansion of the technology to other processes.

Portugal has a highly regulated Banking System but ActivoBank achieved approval from the regulator - Banco de Portugal – for this solution. It was a breakthrough in the Portuguese banking sector that changed the way customers interact with the banks. In 8 months, the project has been a complete success in several dimensions. Nowadays, more than 90% of all current accounts are opened using this system while the other 10% are mostly accounts opened in circumstances that do not allow the use of the paperless devices (out of the branch events, inside company’s premises, etc.). The back office processes are highly simplified and the processes that were reprocessed due to paper-handling problems (i.e. digitalization of documents, lost documents, misplaced mail) were eliminated. Finally, the customers are delighted with the experience and get surprised when they are asked to sign their documents on the branch’s iPad. With this innovation, the Bank is saving “real money”: we are printing about 100k less document paper sheets per year solely on the Account opening process. Our goal is that in the future we have a fully mobile solution for account opening and we manage to expand the technology to other processes of the bank.