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Interestingly, in its latest ad campaign, India's leading TELCO Airtel doesn't even try to claim that its VC solutions are cheaper.  

https://twitter.com/GTM360/status/557545907705905152

The focus is on time saved via VC, which is not a benefit in our context of in-person or video teller at branch.

@UlrichR:

TY for your comment. We recently had to carry out a series of interviews lasting 6-8 hours with an outstation job candidate. Common wisdom dictated that we used VC. However, when we totted up the bandwidth and other costs, we discovered that to-and-fro air tickets actually proved cheaper! Not to mention the in-person option delivered a much better experience. The point is, the digital-only model may not be as low cost as it's made out to be. Like I pointed out in my comment here, "@JamesP is spot on: If the digital-only model really had such a low-cost footprint as it's touted to be, why're UBER, OlaCabs and other "asset-light aggregators" raising 100s of million / billions of dollars of capital?”

IMHO, the choice of channel mix has to go beyond cost alone and look at revenue and profitability: So, to answer your question, it depends upon the revenue / cost / profit of multiple bankers and higher close rate of the branch option versus that of a single banker, multiple video tellers, bandwidth and lower close rates of the remote option.

@StanleyE:

TY for your comment. I largely agree with your view. That said, as a technology marketer, I do believe that relationship and technology are not mutually exclusive! I remember a technology from a company called Zoot or something like that which suggests what targeted offers bank tellers can make to customers standing in front of them. As I remember, it was rated as a Top 10 fintech product by Forrester or some other leading analyst a couple of years ago.

@JamesP is spot on: If the digital-only model really had such a low-cost footprint as it's touted to be, why're UBER, OlaCabs and other "asset-light aggregators" raising 100s of million / billions of dollars of capital? Meanwhile, when was the last time anyone bought a financial product from a remote channel? I thought so, too. IMO, therein lies the Secret Of Survival Of Bank Branches.

With TESCO Bank's spanking new systems causing even longer downtimes, is it already time to estimate the size of market of open systems transforming to legacy?

"The bank has yet to offer an explanation for the cause of the breakdown." When it does, I'm sure what it won't be: Legacy systems.

I agree with @NickC about behavioural, ergonomic and psychological factors at play. That said, maybe banks and other service providers have finally "got" this, since I haven't been under pressure from anyone for at least one year to turn off paper. I've also started noticing TransPromos on paper bill real estates, so maybe these companies have finally stopped obsessing about costs and have shifted their focus to increasing ad revenues. 

I remember the excitement caused by Mint when it launched in 2009 or so. Everyone thought the new genre of Personalized PFMs would revolutionize the way people "work, live and play". The hype was so infectious that I bought the P2FM.com domain name. There was a spate of Mint-clones like WeSabe (USA), Kublax (UK), etc. Unfortunately, when all the hype died down, P2FMs found that not many people were willing to take the risk of violating the TOS of their banks and other service providers by handing over the account credentials of all their accounts to the P2FM. One after the other P2FM shut down, including the aforementioned ones. More in my comments below this post: https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=10059

All the practical problems that affected web-based P2FMs are affecting MObile Money Management Apps (“MoMMAs”). As of now, I haven’t seen MoMMAs do much more than warn their users that their $2.99 coffee will bust their budget. What’s the chance that Gen Y & Z will come out of WhatsApp / SnapChat / Instagram and hand over their account credentials to a MoMMA in return for advice that they must anyway be getting from their biological mothers? Gen Y and Z may be flightly but they’re not fools. 

We know how the web-based P2FM movie ended. The mobile money management app story won’t end very differently. Even if I'm proven wrong in future, we’re talking about the present and paper works best for money management.

This "don't give a damn about individual customer preferences" approach is ludicrously out of synch with current customer engagement best practices around segmentation, targeting, 1-to-1 marketing, etc. Besides, cutting costs is a stupid move when it can result in loss of much greater revenues, as it does in this case: As I'd highlighted in Save Costs But Lose Revenues With eBills And eStatements, "By turning off paper, billers ... save a few pennies ... but ... lose a lot of dollars..."

@CharmaineO & @NickC:

According to his tweet, Bill Gates himself seems to have pushed back the the period of significant change in retail payments to 15 years!

https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/563010428511735810

Today, 2 billion people don’t have a bank account. In 15 years they’ll be making payments with their phones: b-gat.es/1F65ZXa @verge 

From personal experience, I entirely agree with the findings of this study.

It's much easier to annotate a paper credit card statement with a highlighter than an eStatement for things like potentially wrong charges. 

I've blogged and commented to this contrary-to-conventional-wisdom effect on several occasions:

https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=6106

https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=6281

Am finally glad that empirical studies bear out this viewpoint - again, I notice, contrary to common wisdom: "While many respondents said receiving information in an electronic format helped them manage their finances better, the result of the behavioural experiment found the opposite was true."