Banks agree that digitalisation in the financial sector is driven by customers - report

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty in the competitive environment is also high on the agenda with more than 90% consensus. In order to increase their overall attractiveness to customers, the respondents believe that a multi-channel approach (online, mobile, branch) is the most important success factor, ahead of personalised services or choosing the right technology platform, according to a recent survey issued by GFT market research company.

Digitalisation is making it possible: new competitors have woken up the banking industry – from small fintechs to global corporations such as PayPal and Facebook. Banks are now focusing on providing a consistent customer experience, across the digital and traditional channels. However, they are changing at different speeds; 48% of the banks surveyed expect to have fully implemented their digitalisation strategy in three to five years and 36% want to be ready in one to two years.

In general, the experts taking part in the survey believe their industry is actively dealing with the topic of digitalisation: 83% are working on their strategy or have initiated one or more projects; just over 7% already have a full range of offerings available in the market, and just under 10% are not yet dealing with the issue. The respondents believe the greatest obstacles are suboptimal organisational structures, the integration of new services into existing infrastructures and a shortage of skilled personnel with digital expertise. Other trend indicators of the non-representative GFT survey of experts underline the industry’s rethinking process. In the three focus countries, Germany, Italy and Spain, decision-makers of nearly all relevant market participants expressed their opinion with similar trends, but also a number of significant differences.