Banking is an integral part of the economy in any country. This sector faces many challenges due to the pandemic; hence, upskilling has become a significant requirement.

An LMS in banking is necessary because there can’t be a common training place for the banking employees. Training has to be organized at offices, but banks have many branches.

Hence, the banking employees should be given feasible training that does not involve skipping office hours.

With finance eLearning, banks have gotten a significant advantage in terms of training employees without facing the problem of repeating training and even tracking compliance.

The employees can also be given scheduled training as per their comfort and can watch small bytes.

The communication skills in banking employees have been an essential matter to the companies due to which they must be given role-plays through elearning. The banking employees need to have excellent knowledge about products, and only then can they sell them. With onboarding accessible for them through finance elearning, they can handle the customers much better.

When employees are given role plays through finance learning, they can handle customers in an everyday scenario with frequent withdrawals and deposits. So, the banking employees handle in-person visits, which are also tough apart from calls requiring them to extract customer information. Employees need to go through desktop banking software during call handling 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 e-learning for their betterment in a call handling role.

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 anything because the customers can’t handle the enormous customer influx due to changes in IT systems. The employees could miss out on essential opportunities due to a lack of understanding about IT systems apart from having frustrated customers. And with such massive employee strength organizing even synchronous virtual training is an impossible task. Hence asynchronous e-learning involving simulations is a plausible option because employees can be trained without managers’ need 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 sellers require training, due to which finance elearning is pivotal. There are different training portals for distinct kinds of employees with an LMS. In finance elearning, employees are not served any futile information, and the engagement is even more. The employees also get encouragement when asked to conduct webinars on the LMS in banking. Banks have not discovered the importance of customer service. It’s because, without effective service, customers tend to choose competitors. And it serves no purpose for companies to lose business because winning new customers is costly compared to retaining existing ones.

Hence, banks have to implement finance elearning because of the higher penetration of the younger generation in their customer base because they prefer digitalization in services. Banks indeed have to understand that customers will still prefer digitalized services in a post-pandemic world. For example, they 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 the highly digitally savvy customers.

Apart from the pressure of training banking employees to cope with digitalization, it’s also a need due to cybersecurity issues. The criminals now find it easier to access banking data because everything is on a server rather than 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 here. 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 in a bank have been compromised due to the installation of malware on his system. So, antivirus software should be installed on every PC so that employees don’t click on links in an email from nefarious sources that are blocked. Such links download malware on their systems, and hence all their credentials for logging into a banking software are revealed to the hacker.

Banking employees have to be cautious with what they reveal on social media. It’s a problem when banking employee reveals their birthdays to unknown people on social media, which the former have used as credentials on their desktop software. The banks have to ensure that the employees are given cybersecurity training not to disclose any such information. Often the social media accounts of banking employees can also be hacked, allowing the hackers to access sensitive information. But with financial elearning, banks can be prepared to take corrective action if any such 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 in 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 employees’ cyber awareness training records. Thirdly, if the attack has happened through a third-party service provider, what are its implications for it. An audit can also happen on a bank after such an incident, and in that case, a prior assessment must be shown.

The bank can convince its customers that its systems were hacking-proof through an assessment. In such an assessment, a third-party vendor checks your systems and uncovers any security gaps, if any. Once the gaps are revealed, they can be filled by the vendor or the internal IT department.

The banks have set up the response system bearing in mind the law enforcement requirements. The customers have to be sent notifications when their account details have been compromised. Through a phone line, affected customers can contact the bank officials. The banks should immediately block internet banking in the bank accounts of all such customers. They can also report to the bank if their compromised details are still getting used.

The customers can also be informed of any other preventive steps taken by the bank after such a breach so that there is no repetition of such an incident. It’s better, that the bank has a compliance department 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 a bank; other customers also stop using the services. A significant percentage of customers(29%) said they wouldn’t return to an organization again once it has been affected by any cybersecurity breach. It was revealed in the Verizon and Longitude survey, done in 2019 in 15 countries, including India, Australia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, etc., on 6000 customers. 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 an old one for the customers whose credit or debit card details have been stolen, and the cards linked to the new accounts are issued.

But suppose a hacker has information about your confidential numbers like the social security card birthday dates. He can also apply for loans through your social security number(SSN). Hence when a bank accidentally leaks such details, it’s responsible for providing free credit monitoring services so that its customers whose SSN has been stolen are protected from any dubious credit taken in their name. The customers can also register themselves with credit reporting agencies like Equifax. They are immediately informed whenever someone takes a loan in their name using their social security number credentials.

Coping up with such situations implies that the customers have to apply for a new social security number. But for that, all the details have to be provided again, like proof of age, US citizenship and identity.

However, these 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 anyone else with a loan. So, any 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 the creditors can still access your credit reports. The credit bureaus provide the applicant for such freeze with a PIN so that when he wants to unfreeze because he is himself applying for a loan, the prospective creditors are supplied with his credit report.

The banks have to provide finance elearning for employees to 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 Federal Trade Commission. The affected banking customers can also file an FTC identity theft report, or they can call the fraud department of companies. Through this report, the businesses close the accounts of someone affected, and his login details on shopping portals linked to his credit/debit card details can’t be used for shopping anymore. This ensures that the businesses can know that someone is affected by a debit card theft in a data breach, and they must check the details when validating his card for sales.

The banking customers can also set up a fraud alert through one of the credit bureaus, and the banking employees can assist them in the same. This makes sure that the creditors have to conduct scrutiny before someone takes a loan in a customer’s name.

What if customers lose their debit cards?

Banking customers must also inform the bank immediately once their debit card or PIN has been stolen. It’s because if they inform the bank within two days of such a theft, they are only responsible for payment of $50 under the unauthorized transactions, no matter their amount. But, if the banking customer reports such a theft after two days, they are liable for payment of a maximum of $500 debited through unauthorized transactions from their account.