How Forest Admin helps Fingo onboard thousands new users per day
Executive Summary
- Fingo, the first Kenyan fully digital banking service, has selected Forest Admin as its admin panel solution since the launch of Fingo Africa - the app that empowers young adults in Africa by enabling them to open a bank account via their mobile phone in less than five minutes.
- Fingo relies on Forest Admin to onboard thousands of new customers per day, which involves strict KYC processes.
- Granular access control, including creating separate layouts for different teams, enables Fingo to share different subsets of data to different teams internally (e.g. executives and customer support) and externally, such as to partners like Ecobank or payment service providers.
- Forest Admin serves as the single source of truth in customer operations.
About Fingo
Fingo, launched in 2021 in Kenya, is the first fully digital banking service in Eastern Africa. After entering YC S21 and raising $4 million in seed funding, Fingo partnered with Ecobank, the bank with the largest presence in Africa, and introduced Fingo Africa in May 2023. The app enables Kenyans to open a bank account with a full package of current and savings accounts, credit cards, as well as investment and business accounts in under 5 minutes. The process is hassle-free compared to traditional banks and similar to services offered by Revolut and Monzo in Europe. As a result, Fingo Africa has achieved great success, reaching over 100,000 accounts.
How Fingo uses Forest Admin
Fingo, a customer-focused digital service, required a dependable admin panel for managing customer operations from the start. Ian Njuguna, Fingo's co-founder and CTO, mentioned that they explored various options, including developing in-house tools and testing different providers. After evaluating several choices, the founding team opted for Forest Admin due to its ease of implementation and customization.
"Since adopting Forest Admin, both new and existing features have effectively supported our expanding needs, enabling us to scale Fingo's internal operations," stated Ian Njuguna.
Fingo primarily utilizes Forest Admin for conducting KYC processes during user onboarding, customer support, data analysis, and managing external partners.
KYC and user onboarding
KYC (Know Your Customer) is a crucial process used by businesses, especially in finance, banking, and online services, to confirm their customers' identities. The aim is to prevent illegal activities such as money laundering, fraud, or terrorist financing.
For rapidly growing new businesses like Fingo, streamlining KYC processes is essential. Onboarding 3000 new users daily can be challenging as each user must provide specific documents like an ID, proof of address, and date of birth. Additionally, Fingo may assess the risk associated with a customer based on their profile, transaction history, and other relevant factors. Customers at higher risk may undergo more thorough checks.
Forest Admin's user-friendly UI simplifies this complex process and enhances the team's productivity.
Customer Service
In addition to user onboarding and KYC, Forest Admin is also used by Fingo's customer support team. When customers require help with onboarding or transactions, they contact Fingo directly, and their support team takes care of everything in the admin panel. This process is fast and efficient because all customer data is already in the same system, usually on the same screen.
Managing external partners
Fingo also gives access to their Forest Admin to external partners, including Ecobank. They have created separate layouts for each team, granting access only to necessary data and views for required actions. This not only simplifies the user experience but also ensures compliance with data security regulations. Additionally, Ecobank and other partners, such as payment service providers, have their own dashboards and workspaces for tracking transactions, managing data, creating reports, and accessing real-time logs.
Read more about team-based layouts and Forest Admin for Partners.
A single source of truth for customer operations
All the teams use Forest Admin features such as Custom Actions, Dashboards, and Workspaces on a daily basis.
Custom Actions allow Fingo's team members to perform actions that are specific to their operations, for example, to perform the KYC process or refund a transaction. Read more about Custom Actions on Forest Admin.
Dashboards allow Fingo's internal team and external partners to keep track of the number of new users and their transactions, finalized and ongoing KYC processes, and so on. However, the team has been moving the majority of operations to Workspaces as this feature allows building entirely customizable micro-apps to access a single source of truth on one screen. Read how to build your own Workspace for KYC.
Each Fingo team has its own Workspace or Workspaces. Executives use one to track company data, stay updated, and react quickly when needed. Customer Support has direct access to required customer data and custom actions, such as processing refunds. External partners can quickly check for API performance issues, access real-time logs, and other relevant data.
"Workspace is the primary application inside First Admin we use to assist our customers. It was so easy to build these micro-apps that can be used by anyone, including non-technical team members. We're glad to have everything on one screen, without the need to open several tabs to manage customer data. Workspaces also make it much easier to onboard new customer support team members because they only have to go to one place in order to be able to do everything that they need to do. It makes everyone's work more efficient, from building and maintaining it to using the tool on a daily basis," said Ian Njuguna.