PUBLISHED DATE: 2025-08-15 10:51:42

GLOBAL BANKING BENCHMARK STUDY

Are today's banks ready for a digital-first future?

Executive Summary

Incumbent banks are embracing digital in their transformation efforts – but how can they move faster and put digital and customers first? We surveyed more than 1,000 senior executives from Retail and Commercial Banks around the world to find out.

While the majority of banks today (83%) have a clearly articulated digital transformation strategy, more than half (60%) say they are yet to make significant progress executing on that strategy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only served to reinforce the gaps in incumbents’ customer experience and operational transformation, accelerating the urgency with which they must act to compete with digital-first challengers, new tech entrants, and peer firms.

Publicis Sapient’s Global Banking Benchmark Study is designed to help banks understand how to accelerate to a digital-first future. Based on quantitative and qualitative research with senior executives from leading banks including JPMorgan Chase, ING, HSBC, and BNP Paribas, this study assesses the extent to which organizations have made progress in two areas that are critical to digital innovation: customer experience and operational transformation.

So, what will a digital-first financial future look like? What sets the transformation leaders apart from the rest? And how can banks learn from these leaders to emulate digital-first now and benefit from the opportunities that lie ahead?

Key Findings:

"I don’t think [COVID-19] is a wake-up call. For me, it's an acceleration. We can and should go much faster with our digital transformation initiatives."
— Stefaan Decraene, Head of International Retail Banking, BNP Paribas

Digital capabilities are no longer nice-to-haves – they’re mission critical.

Banks say the following factors have had the biggest influence on their digital transformation priorities:

Beware the gap between aspiration and action.

Proportion of respondents who agree with the following statements about their organization’s future digital transformation plans:

Banks need to move at pace towards a digital-first future.

Firms say the following changes would be most beneficial to help them deliver on digital transformation plans in the next three years:

"The basic philosophy is you need to be wherever your customer is or your partner is. Be there. Be part of their journey and their life cycle in whatever device or shape they live it."
— Marco Eijsackers, Global Head of Digital Transformation, ING

See the results of our analysis:

Create unique and beloved experiences which solve for customer needs and turn customers into advocates.

Transformation Leadership Quadrants:

Top Left Quadrant (LEADER):

Top 5 Traits:

Top Right Quadrant (NEW BANKING LEADERS):

Top 5 Traits:

Bottom Left Quadrant: TRADITIONAL BANKS

Drive significantly lower cost-to-serve through highly automated, highly efficient processing.

The Transformation Leaders, Customer Champions, Operational Evangelists, and Slow Starters:

"We need to accelerate our organizational agility to deliver faster, better solutions to our customers in order to be much more competitive."
— Philippe Duban, Global Head of Business Transformation, Wealth and Personal Banking, HSBC

Agility makes transformation leaders more resilient.

Transformation leaders have made significant progress embracing digital-first strategies:

"It all comes back to customer simplicity. Do we make customers’ lives easier? Are we making it easier for them to manage their financial life in one place? The firms that do that seamlessly across products and across experiences in a way that removes the work from the customer, that's anticipatory, that's personalized are the ones that are going to win."
— Allison Beer, Chief Product Officer and Head of Customer Experience and Digital for Consumer & Community Banking, JPMorgan Chase

With a firm focus on investing in and improving customer experience, Customer Champions are heavily influenced by new tech entrants and digital-first challengers.

Characteristics of Customer Champions:

"We can invest in technology for technology's sake, but building the culture, building the understanding of data and design thinking, and prioritizing use cases are more important."
— Sonjoy Phukan, Global Chief Operating Officer, Bank of Singapore

Heavily influenced by online retailers (28%), Operational Evangelists have made significant inroads digitizing operations and embracing agility.

Characteristics of Operational Evangelists:

Instead of competition, the bottom line is more likely to be driving the shift to digital for Slow Starters.

Customer Experience Innovation Priorities:

Operational Transformation Priorities:

Transformation leaders know where the gaps lie and are taking steps to close them.

Total Respondents – Customer Experience Innovation Priorities:

Total Respondents – Operational Transformation Priorities:

Transformation Leaders – Customer Experience Innovation Priorities:

Transformation Leaders – Operational Transformation Priorities:

"Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have adjusted the ways we are working and done a lot of new things very quickly. We should keep looking forward and further embed those changes across our business."
— Valerie Eymard, Chief Engagement, Innovation and Digital Officer – International Retail Banking, BNP Paribas

Four Actions Banks Should Take: Charting a Path to Transformational Leadership

Today's incumbent banks are aware that they need to put digital at the core of everything. To become transformation leaders, drive growth, and prepare for a digital-first future, they must:

  1. Know the Competitive Landscape
    Two-thirds (67%) of transformation leaders say they need to invest more in digital innovation to keep pace as digital-first challengers, fintechs, and new entrants reshape the outlook.
  2. Transform People and Culture
    Leading banks recognize investing in developing talent, skills, and transforming culture goes hand-in-hand with technology investments; they are not separate. 29% say lack of skills has been a barrier to transformation in the past, and 37% are prioritizing existing talent development in their current strategy.
  3. Invest in a Partner Ecosystem and Distribution Networks
    Transformation leaders build partnerships more rapidly, allowing them to scale and pivot at speed. 98% say their partner network is broad enough to compete with nimble, digital-first firms.
  4. Be Agile to Move at Speed to Innovate at Speed – and Scale
    Leading banks have grasped this shift and are focused on building urgency. 40% of these organizations believe agile product development is a key trait of digitally innovative financial services firms, compared to only 30% of banks overall.

Publicis Sapient works with over 100 leading financial services companies around the world, helping them to transform for the digital era.

Methodology

We conducted a global survey of 1,041 senior retail and commercial banking executives in collaboration with Longitude, a Financial Times company.

Respondent Functions:

For more information, visit publicissapient.com or contact us.