The Future of Banking is Frictionless— with Ankit Ratan

When Ankit Ratan, CEO and Co-Founder of Signzy, talks about the future of banking, he doesn’t use words like disruption or transformation. He uses one that’s deceptively simple — frictionless.

To him, the story of banking’s future isn’t about going digital. It’s about removing the small, invisible obstacles that stand between customers and the financial services they rely on every day.

Digital ≠ Frictionless

Over the past decade, banking has moved from physical branches to apps and websites, giving the impression that convenience had been achieved. But as Ankit points out, the shift to digital didn’t automatically mean a reduction in friction. Many institutions simply replicated old, manual processes on a screen.

Digital banking can still feel clunky — multiple logins, password resets, long loading times, and poorly integrated systems that force users to repeat the same information again and again. Customers expect banking to be as intuitive as ordering a ride or paying for groceries, yet most digital channels still operate like a maze of forms and menus. This is where the gap lies — between being digital and being truly effortless.

Friction doesn’t only show up in customer interfaces. It’s in the underlying systems that make it hard for banks to respond in real time. A simple query like “Has my payment gone through?” can still take hours of waiting or back-and-forth communication. And while technology has allowed faster transactions, it hasn’t always translated into faster experiences.

The next phase of digital banking, Ankit believes, will be defined by predictability and responsiveness — where customers don’t just interact with their bank, but feel understood by it. A truly frictionless system is one where every question is answered at the right moment, without the user having to ask twice.

Identity: The Original Friction Point

If there’s one area that has historically slowed banking down, it’s identity verification. The process of confirming who someone is — whether during onboarding, KYC, or transactions — has always been cumbersome. For decades, proving identity meant paperwork, manual checks, and long waiting periods.

But this friction point is finally being solved. The rise of biometric authentication and national digital identity systems has brought a fundamental shift.

In Singapore, citizens can use SingPass for secure access across institutions. In India, Aadhaar has done the same on a massive scale. Together, these programs show that identity verification can be both seamless and secure.

Ankit notes that we are now entering a world where confirming identity is no longer the slowest part of banking. Facial recognition, document scanning, and AI-powered verification are making it possible for users to prove who they are instantly — often without realizing it. Signzy’s work in this area has been instrumental, providing banks and fintechs with the infrastructure to automate verification at scale, while maintaining regulatory compliance.

With identity increasingly handled by trusted systems, one of the most persistent bottlenecks in digital banking is being removed. What remains is the task of reimagining the other layers of friction — the ones that lie in how banks communicate and operate.

The GenAI Game Changer

The next frontier of frictionless banking isn’t about authentication or infrastructure — it’s about communication. According to Ankit, this is one of the most broken layers in banking today.

Look at the messages most people receive from their bank: “Your account has been debited.” “Do not reply.” “Transaction failed.” The tone is functional, but also cold — sometimes even alarming. Compare that to how digital-native platforms like Grab or e-commerce apps talk to users — warm, conversational, and adaptive. This difference isn’t trivial. It defines how customers feel about the brand and how likely they are to engage.

This is where Generative AI, and especially large language models (LLMs), can make the biggest impact. These systems can rewrite, personalize, and contextualize messages in real time. They can adapt tone and phrasing to the recipient — casual for a Gen Z customer, more formal for a senior user — all while maintaining compliance and accuracy.

But the opportunity goes deeper than tone. AI can ensure that every customer interaction happens at the right time, in the right way, with information that anticipates rather than reacts. Instead of waiting for a customer to ask about a failed transaction, a bank can proactively explain what happened and what to do next — in natural, human language.

Ankit believes this is where GenAI’s true value will show: not in replacing people, but in making digital interactions feel human. The communication layer, long ignored as an operational necessity, will become a differentiator.

Signzy and the Frictionless Vision

Signzy’s story is, in many ways, a case study of this transition. Founded to make digital onboarding and verification simpler, the company quickly realized it was tackling a larger problem — the structure of friction itself.

Every delay, every manual check, every step that required a human to verify or approve something was an opportunity for innovation.

Today, Signzy’s AI-powered infrastructure helps banks and fintechs onboard customers and businesses in minutes rather than days. Its no-code automation tools allow institutions to deploy identity checks, document verifications, and compliance workflows without rebuilding their systems.

Through partnerships with leading financial institutions around the world, Signzy has proven that automation and security can coexist — and that scale doesn’t have to come at the cost of trust.

By addressing the foundational layer of identity and verification, Signzy has freed banks to focus on customer experience and communication — the next frontiers of innovation. For Ankit, frictionless banking isn’t a distant vision; it’s already being built, one process at a time.

Closing Thoughts

For Ankit Ratan, the future of banking isn’t about replacing people with machines. It’s about designing systems that make trust, access, and simplicity default features — not luxuries.

Friction will never disappear completely, but it can be engineered to the background. With digital identity maturing, communication becoming personalized, and AI enabling new forms of empathy at scale, we are closer than ever to a financial world that simply works — quietly, intuitively, and for everyone.