3 in 5 APAC banks do not have full digital account opening for new customers

A recent survey by analytics software firm FICO has revealed that three in five (60 per cent) banks in the Asia Pacific have yet to offer a fully digital account opening process for new customers, despite recent reports that nearly 9 in 10 financial institutions in the region embarked on digital transformation.

The region’s changing regulations (28 per cent) and the need to create digital know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) (21 per cent) solutions were cited as the two key challenges for APAC banks looking to acquire new customers online.

For some established banks, one short-cut to their own existing challenges, incumbent technologies and inefficient silos is to start again. FICO’s survey revealed that 79 per cent of the banks have launched or are currently considering a separate digital banking offering to leapfrog challenges in acquiring and retaining new customers.

FICO’s survey found that 40 per cent of respondents said digital-only banks and fitness were the greatest competition to their business, with APAC Internet players (20 per cent) and telcos diversifying into lending (20 per cent) coming in equal second place. Conversely, the greatest opportunities for digital banking for the respondents were nominated as digital payments (32 per cent) and personal loans (24 per cent).

APAC banks said they are planning to focus on investing in data science (19 per cent) and improving their customer segmentation for products and services (19 per cent) as their top priorities for their bank transformation.

When asked about the future size of their bank in the year 2030, some 28 per cent of the survey respondents predicted that their organisations would need fewer employees (between 5 to 50 per cent decrease). A further 28 per cent said they think they will need significantly less staff (a 50 per cent or more decrease) in 2030.