Digital Bank Journey

Exceptional Digital Experiences Help Mox Attract Over 200,000 Customers in 13 months

Launched in September 2020, Mox Bank Limited ("Mox") has become the highest-rated virtual bank in Hong Kong in App Store and ranked as #1 mobile banking app in Hong Kong and Asia by Sia Partners 2021 Mobile Banking Benchmark.

Mox is taking the virtual banking world by storm with a unique approach to its business. There are more than 100 banks in Hong Kong, and some have been in the market for over 100 years. Before venturing into the banking world, we conducted ethnographic research that dis- covered more than 80 pain points customers identified in existing banking experiences in retail banking in Hong Kong, and they are across onboarding, payments, channels, savings, etc. When building its infrastructure, Mox set about addressing those challenges. Product sophistication in Hong Kong is very high, but the actual digital lack of client experience focus was evident in mobile banking, which presents a huge opportunity for digital financial services providers like Mox.

Mox also believes that if they make themselves more relevant to their customers and daily lives, the business will follow. Mox aims to put the heart in banking and
build trust and partnership in the ecosystem. When their customers grow, they will grow too. Identity has been playing a pivotal role in Mox's success journey. Rather than building its business based on traditional banking technologies and architectures, Mox has been built with a service-oriented model aimed at customers' digital lifestyles and constructing a deeper relationship with customers. Based on this, knowing our customers and what data they can access while allowing them to seamlessly navigate across services are crucial.

Signing up for a Mox account is fast, secure, and free. It takes only a few minutes, and customers can do it from their mobile phones. Mox account opening pro- cess includes best-in-class identity verification and fraud prevention techniques. Being the first journey that customers experience with Mox, account opening ("onboarding") is one of the most critical journeys for Mox, the very first moment that customers experience.

Mox's simple onboarding has a sophisticated back- ground, taking just a few minutes from downloading the mobile app to bank account activation. While digi- tally onboarding the customers, preventing fraud, and complying with KYC (Know Your Customers) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) regulations in Hong Kong, it requires a solid orchestration of customer experience, architecture, and processes. Account opening results from over a 99.5% success rate in truly validating identity.

The most critical step is Identity Document Verification (IDV), and the keys are to validate the identity docu- ment and the authentication of the person who submits. Through digital ID scan, Artificial Intelligence-powered ID proofing, similarity check, and liveness detection, Mox ensures that customers complete the journey with no hassle; while doing necessary security checks, including human oversight. Mox reviews all of the submissions manually as well to always guarantee that the systems are performing with the highest standards.

Submission results will be almost instant at the end of the customer journey, while some cases may require addi- tional verification. In these cases, the customer care team gets into the picture and completes the process through a video call at the customers' preferred date and time. Identity verification during onboarding is not a one-off process but rather is the foundation of customers' entire identity lifecycle. Hence, setting up of sufficient authen- tication credentials, including biometric factors during onboarding helps solve future problems much easier.