Digital Banking Transformation - Thematic Research

Summary

Digital banking comprises a vast ecosystem of provider types and business models. This report looks specifically at whether incumbent banks can digitize at sufficient pace and scale to protect existing customer numbers and revenue pools.

At the height of the pandemic, consumer behavior began to outpace the channel capabilities of slow-moving incumbent banks, reinvigorating providers around digital transformation. However, there are clear tensions between tactical time-to-market priorities and the longer-term tech changes required to emancipate providers from legacy. Institutions that focus on knowing their customer - not just from a regulatory perspective, but in terms of financial impact, behaviors, and prospects - will be best placed to succeed under conditions of expedited change. This will require the operational agility to recalibrate customer personas, risk models, and channel propositions.

Scope

• Banks’ channel migration efforts have not met expectations. Many commentators expected mobile to quickly displace all other channels, with attendant risks that consumer behavior could outpace banks’ channel capabilities. But this situation has not transpired.
• Banks that view digital transformation as building new capabilities - around cloud, API, big data, etc. - tend to score better in terms of customer satisfaction, cost reduction, and operational agility than those that have merely digitized existing analog processes.
• Leading institutions have prioritized core decision-making processes. Credit-related activities typically cut across front-office, risk management, and back-office procedures; integrating these actions into one straight-through process offers the biggest efficiency gains.

Reasons to Buy

• Understand key technology, macroeconomic and political, and regulatory trends characterizing digital transformation efforts at incumbent banks.
• Access the latest consumer survey data on evolving channel behaviors, provider preferences, and product holdings.
• Identify leading digital transformation efforts based on cost/income and customer satisfaction metrics.
• Access firm-level/case study insight on successful digital transformation efforts by incumbents.