We’ve just published the latest in a series of reports that help leaders understand and promote the value of digital customer engagement in retail banking. These reports are meant to help FIs measure and communicate the bottom-line benefits accruing from increasing levels of digital engagement across all areas of the institution. Throughout, we’ve drawn on Celent primary research, qualitative conversations with banking leaders, and our first-hand experience and perspectives across the industry.

• A New Era for Retail Digital Banking Leaders: The Current Challenges and Three Pragmatic Approaches (April 2023)
• The Digital Value Puzzle: How FIs Struggle to Connect Engagement with Results (June 2023)
• How Banks and Credit Unions are Solving the Digital Value Puzzle (August 2023)

In the first report, we defined a central challenge facing digital banking leaders today: how to measure the business value that increasing digital customer engagement is delivering to the institution. That report also proposed bottom-line value reporting as a common language that could be used to drive better collaboration across the many business lines that are responsible for delivering digital customer experience across the bank.

The second report examined the depth of this challenge at North American institutions. We shared the results of a Celent survey of digital leaders, highlighting specific areas of weakness across FI’s of all asset tiers. We identified specific disconnects between and other key digital touchpoints, including Banking Wealth/Investments, Marketing, and Credit Card fulfillment. And, we found that these challenges persist across asset tiers.

Our third installment, just released in August, explores how some FIs are meeting the challenge. We interviewed the banks and credit unions from our survey with the highest levels of digital metrics maturity and collaboration across business lines. What we learned from those exchanges is summarized as best practices for all digital leaders to apply at their own institutions.

Celent has long researched leadership and technology best practices for customer engagement in retail banking. We believe it is more important than ever for banks to position themselves at the center of their customer’s financial services engagement. That’s becoming more difficult as specialized fintechs, brokerages, digital wallets and value stores, and even larger banks increasingly fracture the customer’s attention across numerous services.

We’ll continue to provide research and advisory on those topics in the months ahead, exploring specific opportunities for banks to provide differentiated value propositions, retain customer and deposit share, and communicate the value that digital investments are returning to the institution.

Non-clients should connect with us to talk about how our research on this topic and many others can help you. For more on Celent's coverage of digital customer engagement, you can explore our Engagement Topic Hub.