2025: The Digital Banking Landscape Is Poised For Another Transformative Year

In today’s rapidly changing financial landscape, providing an excellent digital experience is essential to gaining a customer experience-driven competitive edge. As we step into 2025, digital technologies will continue to shape and transform banking experiences. Now is the time to take the pulse of and fine-tune your strategy and actions!

Customers Expect Nothing Less Than Great Digital Experiences

Consumers’ behaviors, preferences, and expectations keep evolving as digital touchpoints proliferate. In 2024, globally, most banking customers used mobile banking apps as their primary channel to engage with their bank. And in countries like the UK, the US, and Australia, a majority of customers want to be able to accomplish any financial task through a mobile app. While customers are shifting en masse to digital, they still expect consistency and seamless interactions with their banks across an ever-wider range of channels and touchpoints. They value connected experiences that blend human and digital elements. They also expect their banks to deliver convenient and personalized experiences that help them perform regular banking tasks, access customer service, and achieve financial goals.

Digital Banking Experiences Are Becoming Increasingly Humanlike, Connected, And Empowering

Leading banks already combine broad functionality with strong user experience to deliver on ease of use and effectiveness in their digital channels and help customers achieve better outcomes. Competing for primacy, the savviest are keen to foster deeper and more meaningful engagement with their customers. They’re now increasingly focused on designing experiences that drive emotional engagement, and the most innovative organizations leverage emerging technologies and invest in modern architectures, systems, and capabilities to enhance and transform digital experiences — setting the stage for the future of digital interactions. As a result, digital banking experiences are becoming increasingly:

• Humanlike. As banking customers gravitate to digital touchpoints, banks understand the critical need to deliver an exceptional user experience. They aim to minimize friction, reduce cognitive load, and simplify tasks. Additionally, the most innovative banks are exploring AI-powered interfaces to make digital interactions more natural and engaging. As a result, digital banking experiences are becoming more conversational, intuitive, and humanlike. Anticipate conversational banking to take off in 2025!
• Connected. To meet the needs and deliver the financial outcomes of the “always on” customer, banks must maintain a real-time, comprehensive view of their customers. They need to provide consistent, seamless, and context-rich experiences across various channels and touchpoints, embedding their products and services where customers need them most. APIs and open architectures facilitate integration, while AI and automation enhance efficiency. Consequently, digital banking experiences are becoming increasingly integrated and connected. In 2025, embedded finance will gain wider appeal.
• Empowering. To attract and retain customers while boosting trust and satisfaction, banks must show that they understand and can anticipate their customers’ unique financial needs. Leading banks leverage advanced technology, data, and analytics to develop a comprehensive view of customer behaviors, preferences, and intents. They optimize digital touchpoints based on customers’ context, preferred interaction modes, and activities. By engaging customers with highly personalized and relevant content and services at their moments of need, digital banking experiences are becoming more assistive, anticipatory, and agentive — ultimately becoming more empowering. We might expect a push toward autonomous finance in 2025.