The most critical scenario in onboarding does not concern users who drop out right at the first step. It is the prospective customers who have already worked their way through almost the entire process and abandon it just before the finish line. Market analyses show that digital application processes suffer significant friction losses, particularly in the final stages. [1]

The cause usually lies not in a lack of interest in the product, but in technical system limitations: a media break caused by an external identity verification process, one too many form fields on a smartphone, or a glitchy redirection to the signature page. The greatest untapped revenue potential therefore lies in optimising existing completion processes. Every step that is eliminated stabilises the conversion rate, reduces customer acquisition costs (CAC) and maximises the efficiency of sales channels.

The biggest conversion losses rarely occur where banks expect them to

In banking projects across the DACH region, we repeatedly see the same three weak points. Not in individual functions, but in the end-to-end mobile journey.

1. The identity verification break

The most critical phase is the transition to the identity verification process. If the user has to switch to a browser or a third-party app for this, the risk of abandonment rises sharply. It is therefore crucial to integrate the process as deeply as possible into the app, so that there is no change of context at all. Which method is used then becomes a question of user-friendliness: As a modern method, eID verifies identity in two to three minutes, rather than sending the user into the queue of the traditional VideoIdent. In the medium term, the European EUDI wallet will further standardise this approach.

2. Rigid form workflows

Every additional mandatory field costs a disproportionate amount in terms of conversion on a small screen. Yet the solutions have long been standard practice: the information on the ID document is taken directly from the scan. Any further information entered by the user often does not need to be entered manually at all: the BIC can be derived from the IBAN, whilst email addresses and telephone numbers can be pre-filled automatically. This alone reduces form abandonment by 75 per cent and the time taken to complete the form by 35 per cent. Which additional sources can be tapped into depends on the product range. Added to this is regulatory pressure: anything that is not accessible since the BFSG came into force not only fails to meet requirements but also costs in terms of conversion. The good news is that both objectives work towards the same goal. Every field that is filled in automatically is one less that needs to be read aloud, tapped and completed without errors. This reduces both the abandonment rate and the barrier to access.

3. The Dead End

A failed validation, a timeout in the backend, and the user is faced with a technical error message, passed through unchanged from the core system, with no way back. The abandonment is not caused by the error itself, but by the lack of a recovery path: the flow has no ‘Continue’, only an ‘End’.

The same breakdowns, three product ecosystems

Although these challenges exist across the industry, every application workflow differs in detail. The exact need for optimisation – that is, which steps can be shortened and which fields can be replaced by pre-filled data – is largely determined by the framework of your specific product.

Loans. This is where the form workflows are most rigid: creditworthiness, household budget, proof of income, anti-money laundering identification. The customer is expected to enter their income and expenditure themselves and upload documents, whilst manual checks are carried out in the background. This is precisely where pre-filling pays off the most: reading pay slips and ID documents, pre-populating the household budget from a PSD2 account analysis – this enables a check to be carried out almost in real time. A battle with documents is transformed into a confirmation process.

Securities (neobrokers). In brokerage, the time taken to execute the first trade is crucial, and the impulse to invest is fleeting. In between lie the MiFID suitability assessment, tax details (tax exemption order, church tax status), source of funds and the securities account transfer, which currently takes a considerable amount of time. The solutions: eID instead of VideoIdent; an interactive MiFID workflow that dynamically adapts to the user’s responses, rather than a confusing form; and a read-only securities account transfer running in the background in parallel. Simply doing away with mandatory registration at the outset leads to significantly more successful sign-ups. This is precisely where market demand is currently greatest.

Payment transactions. With current accounts, the breakdown lies in authentication and the initial funding process: PSD2-SCA redirects, account top-ups via traditional bank transfers with days of waiting time, and a card that only becomes active at a late stage. Yet online banking has long been the widespread standard in Germany, and the data is already available in a structured format. Anyone who handles the initial top-up directly via Open Banking (PSD2), embeds Strong Customer Authentication instead of redirecting users, and immediately adds a virtual card to the wallet keeps the user in the flow.

The root causes lie behind the app interface

Core banking, KYC, identity verification and digital signatures all converge via regulatory requirements and multiple service providers. It is precisely at these touchpoints – not on the user interface – that the user loses their way. The solution therefore usually lies not in the core, but before it: in an upstream integration layer (backend-for-frontend) that decouples identity verification, KYC and signatures from the core system and orchestrates them within a seamless flow – embedded rather than linked. This eliminates the disruption in the user experience without touching the core systems, which are subject to strict regulatory requirements.

And it is precisely this architecture that marks the point where the present and the next generation of platforms converge.

On-device AI: the same disconnects, a new class of solutions

With Apple Intelligence and Google Gemini, AI is moving directly onto the end device; this means competition is shifting from ‘who has the nicest app’ to ‘who is integrated deeply enough into the operating system’. And it addresses the very areas where the most costly friction points arise today: on-device AI can read sensitive documents such as ID cards, payslips or contracts directly on the end device – in full compliance with data protection regulations and without any risk – and automatically pre-fill them. This streamlines rigid form-filling processes and makes the identity verification step smoother, as the data is extracted within the app rather than in a third-party app.

The real lever lies one level deeper. When Siri or Gemini trigger actions themselves in future – such as “Transfer a maximum of €50” – the app shifts from being a screen to a service: it only appears briefly for biometric authorisation. What matters then is not how many tiles it displays, but whether its business logic is readable by the assistants. Apple’s App Intents and Google’s AppFunctions are the interfaces for this. If an app cannot be found, it will not appear in the responses.

This brings us full circle: today’s encapsulated workflow and tomorrow’s agent-driven app both require the same foundation: a neatly encapsulated, API-accessible and regulatory-compliant business logic. Those who bridge the media gap in onboarding today are simultaneously laying the foundations on which the app will be accessible to assistants tomorrow.

Where you’re losing customers without realising it today

The strategy pays off from day one: every additional percentage point of conversion has an immediate impact on sales figures – without any additional marketing budget, as these deals are generated from traffic that has already been paid for. Optimising the existing customer journey is therefore the most efficient lever for sustainable growth.

This is precisely where adesso’s Seamless Banking Check comes in: rather than making remote assumptions, our banking, UX and mobile experts use genuine user research to track actual user paths through your key app journeys, right up to the system transitions where users lose their way. You’ll receive a prioritised list of actions featuring quick wins. The fact that this approach works even for highly complex processes is demonstrated not least by the first-place win at the Future Finance Innovation Award for an adesso onboarding project.

Let’s find out how much untapped revenue potential lies within your app.