A new competitive shift

After the successful 2013 edition of our Retail Banking Survey, we conducted the initiative once again to explore how digitalization is impacting the way the retail banking industry does business. Our findings send out a stronger call to action than expected. Of 65 banks surveyed in four European geographic areas, we discovered that although nearly all had successfully integrated a first wave of digitalization into their offers, every respondent displayed substantial room for growth in terms of both client centric added value and organization-wide digital implementation. Especially in light of growing pressure from FinTech, the message is clear: retail banking players must continue to innovate to remain competitive in this make-or-break transition.

European retail banking leaders can use the results of this survey to benchmark their performance against their peer group and gain insight into which digitalization efforts are securing or growing revenues within current business models, generating new revenues from innovative models, or optimizing operations and reducing costs. Alongside an analysis of retail banking’s digital maturity status quo, we have contrasted German banking institutions against the EU as a whole and profiled how customer experiences across other digital platforms are shaping their banking expectations—as well as examining how successfully retail banking is meeting those demands.

Digital marketplace

We conclude our survey with recommendations for several high-impact priorities that retail banks can use to accelerate their transformation and enhance their digital capabilities: enhancing the client solicitation model, developing alternative client acquisition engines, exploring potential of new revenue-driven initiatives, better connecting to the broader banking ecosystem, pushing a “learning by doing” approach, reshaping client servicing models, and creating end-to-end digital chains. These recommendations are valuable tools that can assist retail banking players to take an increasingly realistic approach towards the new revenue potential of digitalization and apply it to client centric added value offers that will ensure ongoing competitiveness in the digital marketplace.