Swiss banks failing to embrace digital technology

Swiss banks fall behind in digitalization Keystone-SDA

Swiss banks are falling further behind in the global digitalisation race, according to a study.

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For example, it is still virtually impossible to open an account without a video call or even a visit to a branch, says the Digital Banking Maturity study by consulting firm Deloitte.

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Specifically, Switzerland’s retail banks fell from 18th place in the global digital ranking in 2020 to 27th place. In the first study in 2018, Switzerland had still made it into the top five in the ranking.

However, while other markets have expanded their digital offerings, Swiss banks have now fallen further and further behind over the years.

According to the study, Swiss banks achieved an average ‘digital maturity level’ of 39 points. This is below the global average (41) – and far behind the digital pioneers (60+), which do not include any Swiss banks. “While real-time notifications, AI-supported savings tools and digital insurance have long been standard internationally, many Swiss banks lack these services,” said Deloitte.

Several days to open an account

Nevertheless, there has been progress in “digital account onboarding”: all but one of the Swiss banks surveyed now offer digital account opening. However, waiting times of several hours or days are not uncommon.

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International digital banks enable account openings with AI-supported real-time checks in seconds. In Switzerland, on the other hand, a video call or even a visit to a branch is often required.

“Swiss banks have made small advances in digital account openings, but compared to foreign banks, the process is still comparatively complicated and slow,” said Cyrill Kiefer, Banking Consulting Lead at Deloitte Switzerland. In countries such as Britain, a selfie and an ID scan are enough to open an account.

The smartphone is also establishing itself abroad as the primary access channel for banking transactions: one example of this is real-time notifications on expenses. However, only around a third of banks in Switzerland offer this function. According to Deloitte, Swiss mobile banking apps also often lack basic functions that would promote interaction and customer loyalty.

For the study, the consulting firm used the so-called mystery shopping method to analyse over 1,000 digital banking functions at 349 banks in 44 countries, including 12 local retail banks with a combined market coverage of over 80%.

These include Swiss universal, cantonal, cooperative and digital banks from all language regions. This makes the industry overview representative.

Translated from German by DeepL/mga

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