Many fintechs have adopted enrollment-first onboarding to create a platform-centric experience that inherently reduces early-stage friction.
The shift toward enrollment-first onboarding—whereby the new user is registered into the servicing platform before full authentication takes place—makes relationship development a priority and allows the provider to showcase the platform more broadly.
Fintech leaders such as Chime, SoFi, Varo and Monzo prioritize ensuring that a new user is authenticated securely within the platform before they register for an account or apply for other products. It’s not done with reducing friction as the primary goal, but it does inherently create opportunities to streamline the user journey.
To quantify this, the Journey Effort Score of Curinos’ Digital Banking Analyzer tracks every interaction a user must complete, including clicks, form fields, screen transitions and scrolls, with a higher score denoting more friction. Our data show that US-based fintechs leveraging enrollment-first onboarding journeys currently have an average score of 50.5, compared with 120.1 for national banks and 131.8 for all other US-based institutions tracked. That’s as much as a 2.5x advantage, and the enrollment-first approach is key.
Fintechs leveraging enrollment-first onboarding journeys exhibit up to 2.5x less friction than all other US-based institutions.
Unlocking a Lower-Friction Journey
The benefits of an enrollment-first onboarding strategy are undeniable:
- Strong security with fewer verification steps. Traditional models often require two rounds of verification—during application and at enrollment. With enrollment-first, authentication occurs up front, which eliminates redundant security checks and streamlines the experience.
- No separate login process. In traditional onboarding, users download an app, enroll and log in only after having completed their application. In a platform-centric approach, login is absorbed into enrollment, eliminating an entire step that typically adds 10 to 20 points to the score.
- A controlled and linear journey. By keeping users inside a single, structured journey, fintechs ensure onboarding feels natural. It can eliminate the need for potential repeat inputs such as email, phone number and SSN when applying.
Absorbing login into enrollment eliminates 10 to 20 Journey Effort Score points.
Here are a few examples from leading fintechs of enrollment-first in action:
- Varo enrolls users on the very first page, incorporating a single “Continue” button that also serves as the agreement to key terms and conditions.
- After users select a product, SoFi immediately enrolls them before any other step, thereby ensuring they’re authenticated up front.
- Monzo reduces friction even further by skipping user and password creation altogether. Users begin with simply an email verification, which maintains security but eliminates unnecessary input fields.
Despite these advantages, an enrollment-first strategy comes with the risk of redundant account creation. While traditional banks may elect not to incur it, fintechs are generally more apt to view it as an acceptable risk in the course of doing business.
