Banks do not consider themselves capable of delivering on some of the most important aspects of data management, according to a survey from GFT.
Respondents to GFT’s Digital Banking Expert Survey 2016 highlighted managing structured data as the most important aspect of data management, with 72 percent saying they consider this to be significant. However, only 56 percent said they have capability for managing structured data.
The second-most cited aspect was accessing all types of internal customer data, highlighted by 70 percent of respondents. However, again, only 56 percent said they feel they have this capability.
Generating insight and actions for target groups was considered important by 67 percent, and real-time data analysis was identified as important by 66 percent, however for each of these tasks, only 42 percent said they have the capability to complete them.
The survey also revealed a small increase in the number of firms that have completed their digital banking strategy and implemented their digital banking solution, from 7 percent in the first survey in 2015 to 9 percent this year.
Almost half, 49 percent, said they have their digital strategy in development and are in progress of implementation, while only 4 percent said they have no strategy in place and haven’t started implementation.
The ability to deal with security issues were found to be the top key factor for success, however it was also named as the top barrier to implementation of digital strategies.
This comes as a contrast to the 2015 survey, in which security aspects were considered only the eighth-most important success factor, and the sixth-biggest barrier to implementation.
Last year’s top success factor, providing a consistent, intuitive customer experience, dropped to second place this year. The third-most cited success factor this year was co-innovation and feedback from customers, up from its seventh-place spot last year.
In terms of barriers to implementation, regulatory and compliance issues were named as the second-biggest challenge, after security. This is also an increase, as regulatory issues were considered the fifth-biggest barrier in last year’s survey.
The report said: “Many banks are at an advanced stage when it comes to planning their digital banking strategy, but when it comes to actual implementation they still have a lot of catching up to do. The key task now will be to translate what they have captured on paper into actions.”
Marika Lulay, COO at GFT Technologies, said: “Building the digital bank of the future has to be a concerted effort and an emphatic desire if you want to inspire customers, or if you want to keep a tight rein on costs, or if you ultimately want to win the competition yourself.”
The survey included responses from 260 individuals from retail banks in Brazil, Germany, the UK, Mexico, Italy Switzerland and Spain.
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