3. Digitize commercial banking offerings and automate processes In the weeks after the outbreak, Asian banks serving commercial Similarly, to prevent the pandemic from blocking their ability to acquire new customers had to move rapidly to ensure their operations did not customers and sell new products, some bank chose to move quickly towards contribute to the spread of the virus.5 Traditional relationship management electronic customer onboarding, online document submission, and e- methods had to be re-thought, along with the types of branch-based signature tools. The necessity that today drives small business and other services that many small businesses valued. commercial customers to use digital services will improve their propensity to engage with banks in this way long after the virus is under control. In many ways, COVID-19 is forcing commercial This will allow long-term reductions in cost-to-serve, even for those banks to accelerate digital transformation customers who have proven the most reluctant to move away from initiatives and move customers quickly to digital “assisted” channels. offerings. Commercial banks that choose to be integrated into a digital ecosystem of platforms and service providers and have invested in digitizing their own services will be able to roll out new or complementary offerings rapidly and engage with their customers more safely. A leading bank in the US, for example, deployed a new digital process, allowing its retail and business customers to defer repayments for 30, 60 or 90 days with two simple clicks on its internet banking solution. In the first two days, more than 25,000 customers took advantage of the new process. 11 Copyright © 2020 Accenture. All rights reserved.