GLOBAL BANKING BENCHMARK STUDY 2024

Digital Transformation: What's Next for French Banks?

The inside story from 70 senior French banking leaders

To uncover the state of digital transformation in French banking, we surveyed 70 senior French banking leaders for their insights. We asked them how their transformations are progressing, what their main challenges are, and how they are prioritizing their transformation strategies.

Here’s a snapshot of what we found:

KEY STATS AT A GLANCE

70%: Seven in ten believe their firm's legacy systems and infrastructure are hindering them from providing the digital experiences their customers expect.
69%: Over two-thirds admit evolving customer expectations have highlighted the weaknesses in their organization's current customer experience.
50%: Half cite ESG and sustainability as their company's number one priority over the next three years.
26%: Just over one in four French banks have a fully agile operating model.

The top priorities for digital business transformation in French banks are:

16%: Enabling greater agility
14%: Acquiring new customers
13%: Growing revenue from existing products
13%: Improving the customer experience
11%: Growing revenue with new products and/or service offerings
11%: Reducing costs through improved efficiency
11%: Improving cybersecurity
10%: Challenging the threat posed by new market entrants (e.g., Google, Apple, Amazon)

Key challenges cited by French banks include:

Lack of access to data: 39%
Lack of unified strategy across business units: 37%
Regulatory and technology challenges: 36%

French banks are focusing on customer centricity

Banks want to use data to create new products and services that deliver more personalized omnichannel experiences.

41% said that developing new financial products and services is their key strategy for improving customer experience.
40% are putting community engagement (e.g., educational tools and games to improve financial literacy among children, remote access for customers who lack digital skills) at the center of their customer experience transformation.
39% are prioritizing new distribution channels for traditional products and services.

French banks want to become more agile

Banks are transforming to survive in the customer-centric digital era, but access to data, talent, and the right technology and platforms remains a challenge.

Technology and Data: 44% are focusing their operational transformation on building technology and data platforms to better understand their relationship with their customers.
Cloud Migration: 34% declare cloud infrastructure and migration as their top priority for operational transformation.
Developing New Talent: 33% said that investing in developing new talent is an operational priority, compared to just 30% who are focusing on existing talent.

How do French banks think they stack up?

61% think they’re ahead of their competitors when it comes to their ability to transform customer experiences.
90% think they’re ahead in key development areas, such as innovation for products and services.

AI is now in play

Banks in France see the potential of AI technologies to boost digital transformation.

Speed: 83% believe AI’s biggest potential is in making processes more efficient, profitable, and faster rather than simply doing them better or more accurately.
Investment: 19% of banks’ customer experience digital transformation investment will be prioritized for machine learning, AI, and generative AI.
Capabilities: 67% say they will prioritize non-customer-facing generative AI over the next three years to improve capabilities, with 81% admitting their firms must do more to appeal to digital native customers.

Internal uses of generative AI are the focus—for now

Roughly six in ten (61%) banks are pursuing transactional generative AI use cases such as credit analysis, portfolio management, underwriting, risk measurement, legal contracts, proposals, RFPs, pitch documents, and more.

FRANÇOIS BARLES

Financial Services Lead, France
francois.barles@publicissapient.com

Found this data useful? Get a global perspective.
For more data like this from banks around the world, get our Global Banking Benchmark Study for insights from more than 1,000 global banking leaders.

Download report