Digital Banking: how the right strategy can drive success

It’s time to change your perspective – it’s no longer ‘digital banking’. It’s ‘banking in a digital world’. And to take your rightful place in this digital world, your Digital Banking strategy needs to tick all the boxes.

Customers call the shots in the digital age. Their expectations are higher and they’re less willing to accept anything but the best.

When it comes to digital banking, simply giving customers a way to transact and transfer isn’t going to cut it. Customers want to fully self-service and take control of their own financial management.

Is that part of your digital strategy?

Now is the time to refocus to not only meet customers’ minimum expectations, but surprise and delight them beyond their wildest dreams. If you don’t, you’re putting your bank at risk of falling behind.

Why you need to supercharge your Digital Banking channel Digital Banking is becoming increasingly important. Customers are busy – very busy. They don’t have the time or energy to wait around. They want instant access to their banking products and services. And they want to be able to do it from any device, whenever they want.

Interestingly, your Digital Banking platform is increasingly the only place customers interact with your brand, products and services. Many no longer receive mail communications, go into branches or call into the call centres.

How are you going to communicate with, cross-sell and up-sell to your customers if your Digital Banking platform only offers transactions and transfers?

Your Digital Banking strategy needs to focus on supercharging the channel as a means for all customer communication and to get all customers using it. In other words, focus on maximising uptake and powering the platform with the right technology and tools. According to McKinsey, financial institutions who have a Digital Banking strategy geared toward customer retention and uptake could increase their customer base by 45% by taking advantage of these potential opportunities.

Institutions that don’t get on board? They could lose up to 35% of their customer base.

Quick on the uptake – Digital Banking strategy essentials

You need your customers to be quick on the uptake. You need more of them using your Digital Banking platform regularly and you need it now. To do this, your Digital Banking strategy must tick all the boxes, including:

• Investment in technology that not only meets customer expectations but exceeds them.
• A demand for technology that is flexible and can take advantage of new opportunities, fast.
• An understanding of the importance of accessibility – extremely high uptime guarantees and responsiveness to multiple devices.
• A desire for scalability – your bank is growing, so your Digital Banking technology must be able to grow with you without compromise.
• Features and integrations beyond customer expectations – a strategic focus on technology that gives customers control of their whole financial situation, including tools that encourage, educate and empower them.
• Uncompromising security – without customers’ trust in the security of their financial data, uptake will decline.
• A need to be in control of your own Digital Banking platform – how can your bank be responsive and take ownership of this critical aspect of the business if you must ask an external developer to do even the smallest of changes?
• An emphasis of ease of user experience – your Digital Banking technology must be wholly intuitive, or customers simply won’t use it.

A multi-faceted Digital Banking strategy is the only way you’ll maximise uptake of your Digital Banking platform. Meaning you’ll have a robust channel to communicate with increasingly digital customers, exceed their expectations and improve brand loyalty.

It's time to get on board

As we’ve seen, a Digital Banking strategy that focuses on maximising uptake needs the right technology – and the right partner – to make it happen.

Are you ready to grab your chance to increase your customer base by as much as 45%?

Our team here at Sandstone Technology have worked with dozens of banks and financial institutions to maximise uptake of their Digital Banking platforms.