How Can An LMS In Banking Be Of Help?
Banking is an integral part of the economy in any country. The sector faces many challenges due to the pandemic, hence, upskilling has become a significant requirement. An LMS in banking is necessary because there isn't any common training place for bank employees. Training has to be organized at offices, and banks have many branches. Hence, bank employees should be given training that does not involve skipping office hours. With finance eLearning, banks have received a significant advantage in terms of training employees without facing the problem of repeating training and tracking compliance. The employees can also be given scheduled training at their comfort and can watch small videos.
Communication skills in bank employees are essential, so they must be given role-plays through eLearning. Bank employees need to have excellent knowledge about products, as only then can they sell them. With onboarding accessible for them through finance eLearning, they can handle customers much better. When employees are given role-plays through finance eLearning, they can handle customers in an everyday scenario with frequent withdrawals and deposits. So, the bank employees can handle in-person visits, which are also tough, in addition to calls that require them to extract customer information. Employees need to go through desktop banking software during calls to get the relevant product knowledge, which isn’t easy. They also have to access customer information after verifying their account details. Hence employees have to be given simulations in eLearning to improve their call handling.
Why Is Finance eLearning Necessary?
eLearning also prepares banks for adaptation to rapid change, which isn’t easy. Whenever a bank employs a new IT system, it needs to train employees to handle the system. When banks have so much at stake, they can’t afford to lose any data. The employees could miss out on essential opportunities owing to a lack of understanding of the IT systems, quite apart from having frustrated customers. Organizing even synchronous virtual training is an impossible task with such large numbers of employees. Hence, asynchronous eLearning involving simulations is the most plausible option, because employees can be trained without managers needing to check how they are performing.
The financial service industry is dependent on product sales, whether done through sales teams or external vendors. Both these require training, due to which finance eLearning is pivotal. With an LMS, there are different training portals for distinct kinds of employees. In finance eLearning, employees are not served any unnecessary information, and so the learner engagement increases. Employees also get encouragement when asked to conduct webinars on the LMS in banking. Banks have not discovered the importance of customer service. Without effective service, customers tend to choose competitors, and it serves no purpose for companies to lose business because winning over new customers is costly when compared to retaining existing customers.
Banks have to implement finance eLearning because of the higher penetration of the younger generation into their customer base. The younger generation prefers digitalization in services. Banks have to understand that customers will still prefer digitalized services in a post-pandemic world. For example, they may prefer paying bills and even crediting cash to others through digital channels. The baby boomer generation also prefers using digital pathways for fund transfer transactions. 52% of customers like to conduct online transactions for making payments, like paying bills, and 46% also like using online channels for transferring funds. So, banks have no alternative but to train employees to handle highly digitally-savvy customers.
Apart from the pressure of training bank employees to cope with digitalization, there is also a need due to cybersecurity issues. Criminals now find it easier to access banking data because everything is on a server rather than in paper files. Hence, the problem with today’s world is that information can’t be locked, because passwords can be hacked, and malware can be installed on computers.
Spoofing Takes Anyone’s Identity: Be It A Banking Employee Or A Customer
Spoofing has also become a common problem. Someone can take the identity of a customer and conduct a transaction, so banks have to train employees to ensure that their systems are safeguarded against hacking attempts. Spoofing can happen when the credentials of a high-level employee at a bank are compromised due to the installation of malware on their system. So, antivirus software should be installed on every PC, ensuring that employees can't click on links in emails from nefarious sources that are blocked. Such links download malware on their systems, and then all their credentials for logging into the banking software are revealed to the hacker.
Bank employees have to be cautious about what they reveal on social media. It’s a problem when bank employees reveal their birthdays to unknown people on social media, which they have also used as credentials on their desktop software. Banks have to ensure that employees are given cybersecurity training not to disclose such information. Often the social media accounts of bank employees can also be hacked, allowing the hackers to access sensitive information. With financial eLearning, banks can be prepared to take corrective action if any information leak happens.
What To Do When A Bank’s Accounts Are Hacked?
Banks have to set up a security breach response program to cope with the aftermath of such an incident. Firstly, this program must deal with issues such as customer response in case of a data breach. Secondly, it should know how to handle the law enforcement agencies who can be shown the employees’ cyber awareness training records. Thirdly, if the attack happened through a third-party service provider, it should know how to deal with the implications of that. An audit can also take place after any such incident, and in that case, a prior assessment must be shown.
The bank can convince its customers that its systems are hacking-proof through an assessment. In such an assessment, a third-party vendor checks your systems and uncovers any security gaps. Once the gaps are revealed, they can be filled by the vendor or the internal IT department.
Banks have to set up the response system bearing in mind law enforcement requirements. Customers have to be sent notifications when their account details have been compromised. Affected customers should be able to contact bank officials through a phone line. The bank should immediately block internet banking in the bank accounts of all affected customers. The customers should be able to report to the bank if their compromised details are still being used. They can also be informed of any other preventive steps taken by the bank after a breach to ensure that there is no repetition of such an incident. Banks should have a compliance department that is aware of all the regulatory requirements after a breach.
Data breaches can happen, but banks have to make sure that the customers don’t switch to their competitors. It’s not only those customers whose details have been leaked who stop using the bank, other customers also stop using the bank services. A significant percentage of customers (29%) said they wouldn’t return to an organization once it had been affected by any cybersecurity breach. This was revealed in the Verizon and Longitude survey conducted in 2019 on 6000 customers in 15 countries, including India, Australia, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, etc. So, finance eLearning is helpful for banks to ensure that they have the perfect response to critical situations such as data breaches. Banks can also ensure that a new account should replace the old one for customers whose credit or debit card details have been stolen and that any cards issued are linked to the new accounts.
But suppose a hacker has information about your confidential numbers, like the social security card or birth dates? They can then also apply for loans through your social security number (SSN). Hence, when a bank accidentally leaks such details, it would be a responsible action to provide a free credit monitoring service for its customers whose SSN has been stolen, to protect them from any dubious credit taken on in their name. The customers can also register themselves with credit reporting agencies like Equifax. They are then immediately informed whenever someone takes a loan in their name using their social security number credentials.
Coping with these situations implies that the customer has to apply for a new social security number, but for that, all the details have to be provided again like proof of age, U.S. citizenship status, and identity proof. However, credit bureaus can ensure that you get a credit freeze, which implies that no one like credit card companies and mortgage lenders can access your credit report and provide someone else with a loan. So, an identity thief can’t use your social security number to get a loan. But despite a credit freeze, you are eligible for a loan because creditors can still access your credit reports. Credit bureaus provide the applicant for such a credit freeze with a PIN so that when they want to unfreeze the records because they themselves are applying for a loan, the prospective creditors are supplied with the credit report.
The banks have to provide finance eLearning to help employees deal with such situations. In case of identity theft, the banks should have a recovery plan in place through which the scammed customers can get aid from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The affected customers can also file an FTC identity theft report, or call the fraud department of companies. Using the FTC report, businesses can close the accounts of someone affected, and their login details on shopping portals linked to their credit/debit card details can no longer be used for shopping anymore. This ensures that the businesses know that someone is affected by a debit card theft in a data breach and that they must check the details when validating their card for sales. Customers can also set up a fraud alert through one of the credit bureaus, and the bank employees can assist them to do so. This ensures that the creditors have to conduct scrutiny before someone takes a loan in the customer’s name.
What If Customers Lose Their Debit Cards?
Bank customers must inform the bank immediately once their debit card or PIN has been stolen. This is because if they inform the bank within 2 days of such a theft, they are only responsible for the payment of $50 under unauthorized transactions no matter the amount, but if the bank customer reports the theft after 2 days they are liable for the payment of a maximum of $500, debited through unauthorized transactions from their account.
Originally published at creativtechnologies.com.
