Insights

Retail banking is at a pivotal crossroad as 2030 approaches. New digital banks and fintechs are quickly attracting and keeping customers, frequently topping satisfaction surveys without physical branches or traditional call centres. This disruptive shift is pressuring legacy banks to radically rethink not just technology, but their entire approach to customers.

Many incumbents focus on updating technology, but as covered in our latest informative articles, the actual transformation is cultural. Industry experts observe that established banks often follow product-led or channel-centric strategies, in stark contrast to the customer-centric ethos embraced by neobanks and fintechs. This cultural gap, typically overlooked, is a central battleground for future success.

At the heart of this issue lies customer experience. Today's consumers expect personalised, frictionless service, and the gap between expectation and reality is widening. To close it, banks must modernise operations and empower their teams to think like customers, not gatekeepers or order-takers. Managing, cleansing, and leveraging customer data effectively has become essential for speed, relevance, and proactive service. In this context, personalisation is no longer just marketing jargon: it's a basic requirement to compete with streamlined fintechs and agile telcos entering the banking arena.

Senior leaders candidly share that the real challenge stems from digital-first rivals focused tightly on excelling at a single product or service, delivering it faster, better, and with more satisfaction than many so-called full-service banks. Adopting advanced digital marketing is critical. Giants like Google and Meta are investing heavily to refine targeting, making traditional sales tools look outdated. For banks, leadership must own brand value, ensuring it transcends simple marketing.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have become industry buzzwords, motivating banks to experiment. Yet, as our expert analysis shows, these tools are only practical if banks have already streamlined internal processes and embedded customer-centric thinking. Machine learning now plays a role in fraud, behavioural scoring, and personalisation, but its value depends on groundwork.

Finally, risk management is evolving. Fintechs and telcos now often outperform classic banks, using data-driven lending and faster decision-making to serve both individuals and small businesses when it matters most. As banking's future is redrawn, our valuable insights from industry experts remind us that success demands not just technical upgrades but a wholesale rethink of culture, priorities, and purpose, always with the customer at heart.