Digital Panel Series
Abstract
North American banks and credit unions are achieving widely varied results with digital account openings. The most effective institutions have two things in common: they follow well-established best practices and they rigorously track process and value metrics.
The research for this report is a direct result of banks asking Celent to help benchmark their Digital Account Opening (DAO) operational performance. To do this, we invited our Digital Banking Research Panel members who participated in our March 2021 survey[1]to share anonymized operational results around new account openings across the acquisition channels: digital, branch, and contact center. We compiled a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) collaboratively with several members of the panel.
Providing the information was a heavy lift for many institutions. Many on the panel did not have ready access to the data. Most had to enroll others in the bank to collect the information. In total, 19 institutions responded. Few supplied all the requested information. The idea that those responsible for DAO in many institutions do not closely follow KPIs that measure the efficacy of their efforts may help explain why so many banks underperform. However, this isn’t the only reason.
The wide variation in processes and capabilities uncovered in our March 2021 survey has produced a range of outcomes across most operational benchmarks among institutions on our panel—often by a factor of five.
[1]See the Celent report, State of Digital Customer Acquisition: Much Work Remains