Within the realm of credit card origination, automation is key. Financial institutions that can’t keep up with today’s increasingly time-sensitive consumers will lose that consumer business to an institution that can.
Due to the simple nature and broad appeal of credit cards, credit card origination is a high-volume, low-risk business. In these types of situations, automation is crucial. Because they are comparatively low risk, credit cards can be automatically originated through a credit decision system with virtually no manual intervention. This allows financial institutions to dramatically increase the number of requests they can process without having to change their system or process at all.
Because credit cards are such a popular and high-volume business, financial institutions require an efficient automated process to originate, approve, and issue credit card products. This means that every aspect of the credit card origination process must be fully streamlined to make the customer experience as quick and easy as possible.
There are many credit decision-making solutions on the market that meet the basic requirements for an automated origination system. However, there are additional requirements for an automated system credit card origination system that are driven by the unique features of credit card products as mentioned above.
The first requirement that a credit card origination solution must support is direct processing. Straight-through processing allows a decision engine to process credit card applications from start to finish in a fully automated manner. Whenever manual review is required, the system can place the request in a manual review queue. Once the manual review is complete, the application can be immediately reintroduced into the automated process right where it left off. Straight through processing enables financial institutions to efficiently process the high volume of requests generated by their credit card origination initiatives.
The second requirement involves the completion of the credit card origination process. Once the product is approved for a customer and the account is registered in the appropriate registration system, the consumer wants to start using their new card. Unfortunately, most banks cannot fulfill this wish. The account can be created, but the consumer will not have the actual credit card for a couple of weeks. Instant issuance allows consumers to start using the card the second after their account is created. Whether by providing a temporary credit card (such as a receipt) or by printing the final card at the point of sale, financial institutions can enable their customers to start using their product immediately.
These two additional credit card-specific requirements for an automated origination solution allow financial institutions to implement the best practices necessary for the competitive credit card origination market.
