Secure Messaging for Financial Institutions

Social messaging apps are very common these days and we can't imagine any communications without Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Wechat, Telegram, Facetime, or similar. Gone are the days when SMS was the mode of messaging and BBM (remember Blackberry Messenger) was the only secured channel available for corporations to rely on for business communications. With so many options available people can use varied tools to communicate with each other and this adds another layer of the problem for companies. How to keep a track of what communications are happening with the customers and the sales team.

Financial Institutions are struggling to keep up with the digital expectations of their customers. Fueled by the explosion of these disruptive messaging apps. Consumers now demand convenience and excellent digital experiences when dealing with their bank. Adoption rates of dedicated banking apps remain low because customers want to use the messaging apps they communicate with every day. Without a proper security solution, consumer messaging apps create a large amount of operational and compliance risk. If banks are not reaching customers over their preferred channels, they are missing important revenue generating opportunities and risk client disengagement.

Luckily for regional or country-specific markets, banks can adopt a local channel that is more famous there are certainly preferred apps each country adore so banks or investment institutions can choose which few channels they want to use for their client communications strategy, but, there must be a way that enables financial services companies to use these apps to communicate with and provide new and innovative banking/insurance services to their customers directly over these channels.

A solution that provides a security layer over the messaging apps, so all information sent to or received from customers is fully encrypted and auditable. Messages and information sent can be pulled back (retracted) by the financial institution at any time. Documents such as eStatements, Advice, Notifications, Trade Orders and KYC Information can be sent and received natively, securely and seamlessly. It would be preferred if the solution can work on any device and across any platform. Once a customer has registered their device(s), they should be able to receive the messages, communications, advice to their devices without the need to provide passwords or signing on multiple times.

Another important feature is to be able to store these communications over a persistent storage that will assist in future contextual analytics and identifying the deep needs of the customers to be able to serve them at a much personal experience. Even if there is a change in guard at the front end or sales teams this communication should be available for future references and no information is lost, after all, any communication with the customer is valuable to understand his future decisions towards the products offered to him.

There are some startups that have stepped into this space and started providing secured communications to their clients. I came across two such innovative solutions companies Aprivacy and Leap Expert at the Singapore Fintech Festival 2018 and impressed with the suite of applications they support and also the backup and secured messaging safety they came up with. We need more such solutions in the market as I believe the growing complexity demands more options and may the best one takes the share.