Cofidis offers a lifetime of support through digitalization

“35 years by your side” is how Cofidis describes itself. Founded in 1982, the French company specializing in remote credit and loan provision now has a presence in nine European countries and over 5,000 employees, with about €16 billion ($18.6 billion) in gross outstanding assets. 

Like any other entity in the financial sector, Cofidis has been immersed in a digital transformation process for years, aiming to adapt internal and external processes to changing business needs. In Spain alone, with its 2.5 million customers and nearly 1,000 employees, it has embarked on a more accelerated transformation process over the last three years with the goal to remain relevant in helping partners and clients carry out projects throughout their entire lifecycles, says Benjamín Almeida, the company’s director of data and transformation.

“To achieve this, we had to support them through the digitalization of subscription journeys, but also with a very significant investment in a mobile app that would allow clients to be autonomous in managing their relationship with Cofidis,” he says. 

Currently, Almeida adds, the company is at a key point of maturity after years preparing the foundation. Now the transformation is consolidating across every technological, human, and cultural layer. “We’ve moved beyond the trying new things phase to a model where transformation is now part of everyday life,” he says. “This is evident both in our tools and in our way of working, collaborating, and making decisions.” 

The human component

When this transformation process started, the clear challenge wasn’t technical. The greatest complexity, according to Almeida, was introducing a new mindset with a sense of urgency, and that ability to adapt to change, he believes, is a link to intelligence. “That’s why changing was the smartest thing to do,” he says.

Once this foundation was set, there were several other issues to address in order to successfully transform, such as clarity of data structure to effectively measure progress, changing business processes and work methodologies to increase efficiency, upskilling people, speeding up decision–making, and strengthening governance. “These are all typical issues that any organization must address in a transformation process,” says Almeida. “And anyone who doesn’t address these dimensions isn’t really transforming anything.”

Currently, the company uses various market technologies that cover several key aspects: storage, processing, analysis, security, and legal compliance, all of which are managed by a team dedicated to data governance and digital ethics, since, for Cofidis, it’s essential to guarantee good practices when consuming data. “An example is our semantic layer project, which consists of applying a logical abstraction between physical data and the tools that users use to perform analysis,” says Almeida. “The objective is to translate technical data into well-defined and understandable concepts at the business level, which also gives us greater control when managing access to information.” 

Digital onboarding 

One of Cofidis’s major recent initiatives has been its digital onboarding project, which aims to digitize the entire onboarding process for new and existing customers, creating a more immediate and frictionless experience. “We designed this project with Innolab, our innovation hub, using several tools such as KYC for identity validation, open banking for creditworthiness assessment, digital signatures, instant payments, and 100% automated management,” says Almeida. “We also focus on analyzing interactions with our customers, and thanks to speech analytics technology, we can analyze thousands of conversations per day, better understand our customers’ real needs, and, best of all, we’ve done it in a way that respects privacy and empowers our own teams.”

To carry out this project, the company worked with several providers such as Tink, Logalty, IDnow, and Experian. And the integration and development were carried out in-house with the support of the Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale group. 

Initial results showed compelling results about how customer habits have evolved over the years. “They’re increasingly digital, more instantaneous, and more self-managed,” he says. “If we look at new customer adoption KPIs, we see 65% agree to validate their identity with KYC, 84% consent to us accessing their bank statements digitally to assess their creditworthiness, and for the past four years, we’ve seen over 90% digitally sign their contracts. Since January this year, as well, 95% have chosen instant payment to receive their money.” 

Digital innovation hub

Nearly five years ago, the bank launched the innovation hub, Innolab, the project to address future challenges in the financial sector by driving innovation across the countries comprising the Cofidis Group. “Our team is made up of experts in creating intuitive products and services that meet customer needs,” says Almeida. “Now we can say Innolab, in addition to assisting in our digital transformation, has also helped change the company’s mindset and the way we design and launch new products and services. We’ve gone from talking about innovation and product development to integrating it into the teams’ daily work.”

Innolab has contributed four key elements: vision, method, knowledge, and culture. “We’ve incorporated human-centered design methodologies, generating real knowledge of client needs, connecting insights with decisions, and accelerating validation and time to market,” he says. “We think of design as a strategic tool for creating value. Plus, we’ve leveraged our Open Innovation lab to learn from new market solutions and accelerated internal processes by collaborating with customers and clients.”

Future technologies 

Looking ahead, Cofidis is investing heavily in technologies such as open banking, which improves UX by replacing lengthy forms and the need to submit additional documentation, and allows automation of statement analysis and detailed inferences about financial behavior. The latter, explains Almeida, “allows us to be much faster and focus our credit granting decisions from a more personalized, fair, and inclusive perspective.” 

They’re also making a significant investment in AI, both in terms of its logical and physical structure. “AI will have a considerable impact on all industries, and stakeholders need to learn as much as possible about it as quickly as possible,” he says. “We’re currently exploring many AI use cases, especially to help customers navigate their financial decision-making processes.”