Retail Banks Invest In the Cross-Channel Consumer

The future is (finally) digital for banks. Among banking executives polled worldwide in December 2014 by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Temenos, implementing a digital strategy ranked as the No. 1 priority for retail banks, cited by 46%.

Improving customer segmentation across various channels was also a key focus area, at 39% of respondents. And as banks invest more in following the digital consumer across channels, they’ll likely adopt data-gathering tools that can help them better categorize customers. Indeed, 25% said that a better overview of the customer was an area where technology could have the biggest impact—the top response.

What’s fueling digital investment? Cross- and upselling existing customers was the primary business objective driving such efforts, cited by 40%. Acquiring new customers was the second-biggest influence, at 28% of respondents. With the exception of No. 3 pricing optimization, cited by a measly 12%, no other business objective broke double digits.

If banks want to reach their cross- and upselling goals, as well as improve segmentation, they’ll need to keep up with the multichannel, multidevice consumer. And that’s just what they planned to do. Fully 45% of banking execs said that their companies were focusing on digital investments in cross- and multichannel capabilities—the No. 1 response by far. In comparison, 23%—though still significant enough to be somewhat worrying—intended to focus on individual delivery capabilities.

October 2014 research by Celent found similar results. When asked which retail banking technologies were important, 84% of financial institutions in North America cited digital banking channel development, and 78% called out omnichannel delivery—the top two responses.

Courtesy of eMarketer