Four out of five retail banks project annual growth of more than five percent over the next few years, according to research by Accenture, and are actively investing in new technology to strengthen their cross-selling capabilities.
The study - based on a survey of more than 100 retail-bank executives in the United States, Europe and Asia/Pacific - highlighted a shift in retail bankers' strategic focus from cost reduction to growth. While European and Asia Pacific executives in general favour organic growth, respondents in the US expect M&A activity in the sector to play a significant part.
Piercarlo Gera, a managing director in Accenture's Financial Services practice, says bankers' expectations "will set up a challenging market that rewards those banks with thoughtful and differentiating strategies, critical investments in people and systems, and a laser-beam focus on attracting and retaining customers".
In their efforts to improve cross-selling, surveyed banks says they are focussing internally on improvements to advisory and selling capabilities, data mining, workflow and central marketing capability.
But, while three-in-four respondents rank multi-channel integration for a single customer view as a priority, about the same number identify the retail branch as the most important distribution channel. From a geographic perspective, more than half (57%) of Asia/Pacific bankers prefer increasing self-service access points over opening more full-fledged branches, compared with 37% of US-based respondents and 24% of Europeans.