Digital banking has changed immensely over the past year, and many of the new habits customers learned are here to stay. A full 89 percent of bank customers now leverage mobile banking apps, including 79 percent of baby boomers, and individuals over the age of 65 are now Bank of America’s fastest-growing customer segment.
This skyrocketing digital engagement has also affected what customers expect from their banks, with consumers now seeking out the same personalized, customer-centric approach to banking that they experience in the rest of their daily digital interactions. A study found that 79 percent of United States customers want brands to understand their needs and care ab
out them, and 89 percent said they will only interact with brands that exceed these expectations. Banks will have their work cut out for them if they wish to meet these changing demands.
In the July Digital-First Banking Tracker®, PYMNTS explores the latest in the world of digital-first banking, including how customers’ expectations have changed during the recent digital boom, how banks are working to meet these demands through new technology, and how traditional financial institutions (FIs) are attempting to keep up with their digital-native FinTech cousins.
Developments From The Digital-First Banking World
Customers place such an emphasis on personalized services that they are willing to pay extra for them. One study found that more than 25 percent of customers were willing to pay for photo bill pay, peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, customizable homepages and a host of other digital services, and 72 percent of customers said bank personalization was highly important to them. Most banks have the tools to develop these personalized services, according to industry experts, and must quickly learn how to deploy them or risk losing customers to non-bank alternatives.
Digital engagement skyrocketed over the past year as social distancing and stay-at-home orders limited customers’ mobility. One survey found that 91 percent of bank customers interacted with their FIs through digital channels like banking websites and apps, with more than half of them doing so as a result of the pandemic. The majority of customers said their online experience was satisfactory, with 44 percent only v
isiting physical branches for services that are unavailable online.
Non-bank alternatives like FinTechs have been steadily encroaching on banks’ turf as digital engagement grows, but traditional banks still have many key qualities that set them apart. One survey found that two-thirds of customers think traditional banks offer superior safety and security, as opposed to just 26 percent for direct banks and 9 percent for FinTechs. More than half of customers also said that traditional banks offered better customer support.
For more on these and other digital-first banking news items, download this month’s Tracker.
How Arvest Bank Meets Customers’ Personalization Demands With Phone Call Outreach And ITMs
Customers’ increased digital activity across various channels has greatly affected their expectations for their banks, and personalization is the name of the game. Meeting these personalization demands can be quite a challenge for many banks, but there are several tools to help them do so and to keep them from leaving for FinTechs.
In this month’s Feature Story, PYMNTS spoke with Jason Kincy, executive director of Marketing at Arkansas-based Arvest Bank, about how the FI is leveraging one-on-one phone calls and interactive teller machines (ITMs) to help meet customers’ personalization needs.
Deep Dive: How Banks Are Meeting Rapidly Changing Digital-First Customer Expectations
The banking industry has evolved at a blistering pace over the past year, with the exploding popularity of digital banking irrevocably changing how customers interact with their FIs. Customers are not only placing a greater emphasis on digital channels but also improved focus on personalization, and banks are scrambling to adapt to the new normal with the latest technologies.
In this month’s Deep Dive, PYMNTS explores how banks can harness video banking and ITMs to amplify their digitization and personalization initiatives.
About The Tracker
The Digital-First Banking Tracker®, a PYMNTS and NCR Corporation collaboration, is the go-to monthly resource for updates on trends and changes in digital-first banking.