Münster, June XY, 2023 – In recent years, the branch business of banks has steadily declined due to an increase in digital offerings. Before the coronavirus pandemic, more than a quarter of all retail banking customers in Europe were still exclusively interested in “offline banking” services. This share is forecast to fall to around 10% by 2025, while hybrid as well as fully digital customer behavior will increase significantly.
However, bank branches can still play a decisive strategic role, especially when the employees have the right set of skills. So the time has come to redefine the strategic role of bank branches in order to leverage their undoubted economic potential and create new, integrative incentives for customers directly on-site.
The strategy, IT and management consultancy zeb has recently presented its zeb.branch.compass, which analyzes how bank branches can be revived in the future in order to remain relevant in a changing digital omnichannel world and which concrete measures need to be taken to achieve this.
Interaction is key in the bank branch of the future
Branches will remain an important part of the channel mix, but their role will change dramatically in the future due to many influences including but not limited to digitalization.
From the zeb consultants’ perspective, the bank branch of the future should be a space for barrier-free interaction. It has to create a balance between decisions pertaining to functionality and design. Ultimately, it is about making the bank’s value proposition and brand identity physically tangible on-site and to support the staff in fulfilling their tasks. Interestingly, the branch will remain what digital channels are about to become: a space of dialog between customer and bank.
Further information on the zeb.branch.compass white paper can be found, free of charge, here: The bank branch of the future | zeb (zeb-consulting.com).
As a leading strategy, management and IT consultancy, zeb has been offering transformation expertise along the entire value chain in the financial services sector in Europe since 1992. Our more than 1.000 colleagues are located in 15 offices throughout Europe. Our clients include European large-cap and private banks, regional banks, insurers as well as all kinds of financial intermediaries. Several times already, our company has been classed and acknowledged as “best consultancy” for the financial sector in industry rankings.
Picture is available at AP
7 July 2023
