Credit: Deloitte
Deloitte has launched the 4th edition of its Digital Banking Maturity study, a comprehensive analysis of the digital functionalities and banking market in 39 countries, including Luxembourg, and encompassing 318 banks.
COVID-19 has changed banking and fast-tracked the development of digital channels. While 60% of banks have closed their branches or shortened their opening hours, many have also embraced digitalisation, implementing fully digital processes including account opening (34%), remote identification and verification methods (23%) and contactless payment methods (18%).
In the past two years, digital banking has greatly matured across the globe. Luxembourg has maintained its position, but the gap between digital leaders is increasing, as well as with its direct neighbours. In an ever-accelerating race, just being good is no longer enough. According to the study, Luxembourg banks need to gear up their digital investment to stay in the leading peloton and avoid falling back to the grupetto.
This and other findings of the banking sector's digital capabilities and readiness can be found in Deloitte's Digital Banking Maturity Study, the largest global benchmarking of digital retail banking channels, breaking down what leaders are doing to win the digitalisation race.
What makes a digital champion?
The digital maturity assessment is based on three components: functionalities benchmarking, customer needs research and a user experience (UX) study. A team of over 180 mystery shoppers opened current accounts and evaluated each bank’s internet and mobile banking channels against more than 1,100 functionalities. In parallel, 4,900 customers were surveyed to better understand their needs and preferred channels (branch, internet or mobile). The results were supplemented by a user experience questionnaire (UEQ) and an assessment of nineteen UX scenarios reflecting ten areas of customer activity from every stage of their relationship with a bank.
“Following this methodology, we were able to separate the true digital champions from smart followers, adopters and digital latecomers. Digital champions, which scored in the top 10% of banks globally, provide a broad variety of digital functionalities relevant to their customers and compelling UX. They have leading market practices and are setting key digital trends for the industry,” explained Pascal Martino, Partner and Banking & Human Capital Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg.
What are digital champions investing in now for the future?
Digital champions realise that UX is a key differentiator driving customer satisfaction. The largest gaps between champions and latecomers are in opening an account (71% versus 23% of UX-related functionalities), buying an insurance product (44% versus 7%) and beyond banking service (48% versus 11%).
François Bade, Director of Strategy & Corporate Finance at Deloitte Luxembourg, added: “Digital champions do not only lead their peers in the number of digital functionalities; on average, those that are incumbents outperform other incumbents in their country by both cost to income (-4.0 percentage points) and return on equity (+1.9 percentage points)".
Most banks still need to close gaps in their end-to-end (E2E) digital sales processes to better serve online customers. Digital champions investing in E2E digital sales processes have widened their lead on latecomers for key products, e.g. 51% versus 23% for current accounts, 85% versus 34% for credit cards and 84% versus 30% for cash loans.
“Challenger banks tend to adopt new trends and innovations faster than incumbents. New functionalities typically gain traction faster with challenger banks than incumbents, e.g. providing customers with a virtual debit card in advance of their physical card is 26% versus 2%, while bill split is 27% versus 2%,” commented Xavier Turquin, Senior Manager of Business Transformation at Deloitte Luxembourg.
François Bade concluded: “Our Digital Banking Maturity benchmark also analyses how the local competitive landscape is influencing digital investment priorities. It evaluates individual bank positioning in comparison to local competitors across three dimensions: customer journey, channels and products. Banks need to grasp the full picture of their market situation to understand their next course of action. Making the right strategic decisions will determine their future market positions. The country data and benchmarks behind the global Digital Banking Maturity Study can help banks future-proof their digital strategy".
