Faced with these challenges, the Celent Covid-19 Banking Insight Panel highlighted that the majority of US financial institutions have maintained (44%) or increased (39%) their IT budgets in order to facilitate the digital transformation required to effectively service these customers.
The research has made it clear that 2021 will be led by digital channel and operational efficiency projects, with digital customer acquisition and onboarding a high priority.
As seen in the chart below, in terms of priority focus areas for IT strategy this year, respondents to a Celent study commissioned by ezbob identified ‘enhancing digital self-service capabilities’ (97%), ‘improving digital products and onboarding’ (77%), and ‘operational efficiency/cost reduction’ (71%) as the top three by some distance.