Deloitte report: Singapore banks considered digital champions in terms of digital banking maturity for offering a wide range of functionalities relevant to customers and a compelling user experience

SINGAPORE, 5 December 2022 – According to a newly-launched report by Deloitte, the level of digital channel maturity of the Singapore banking sector significantly exceeds the global average, placing Singapore banks in the ranks of digital champions.

The fifth edition of the Digital Banking Maturity report, the world’s largest digital banking survey, included banks from 41 locations. The level of digital channel maturity was assessed based on analysis of over 1,200 digital functionalities that cover a whole digital customer journey. Singapore’s results have been extracted in the Digital Banking Maturity 2022: Spotlight on Singapore supplement.

The surveyed banks were analysed and ranked in four categories of digital maturity – digital latecomers, digital adopters, digital smart followers, and digital champions, as the best performing banks in our survey.

“What has changed in the last five years of the survey is that the degree to which fully digital transaction and servicing capabilities are now considered “hygiene” across the globe. The leading banks are now differentiating on supporting customers in understanding their financial health, and in enabling their non-financial needs,” said Mr Mohit MEHROTRA, Financial Services Industry Consulting Leader, Deloitte Southeast Asia. “

“There are significant shifts that can be expected from retail banks in Singapore so that they can better respond to the new opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Some examples of potential responses include the incorporation of seamless narratives for their customers and providing protection-oriented offerings to help customers respond to an inflationary environment. These responses, when augmented with insights that help customers do more with less, create nice recipes for collective success. However, to deliver these responses, there are some key tensions that banks need to navigate through, such as deciding if they should pursue incremental or transformational changes, adopt a compete or collaborative strategy, or focus on a narrow or broad set of stakeholder interest, to name a few,” added Mohit.

Where the customer journey steps are concerned, Singapore banks scored above global average in all areas. Singapore banks emerge strong in information gathering, differentiating through banking mobile apps that provide comprehensive information on value proposition, and interest rates/fees/commissions on products. Another strength is in the area of account opening, with key differentiators being in the opening process where customers can upload all account opening documents via the banks’ websites, and providing application updates where customers receive immediate confirmation that their account opening form is being processed.

Opportunity areas for Singapore banks include:

• Account opening
  • Opening process – allowing customers to abandon the account opening process and come back where they left off
• Day-to-day banking
  • Personal finance management – where customers can filter transactions by merchant name on both the mobile app and website
  • Transfers and payments – where customers can set automatic transfers from current to savings account via the mobile app
    • Expand relationship
    o Beyond banking – where customers can receive mobile app geo-targeted notifications about product recommendations and discounts 
• End relationship
  • Retention strategy – where customers receive a retention offer when attempting to end the relationship
  • Account closing – where there is option to complete account closure through the mobile app

“Singapore is a country with very high mobile devices usage, and it makes a lot of sense for the banks to consider more functionalities on their mobile apps to enhance their customers’ experience across all steps of the customer journey,” said Mohit. “Banks need to consider the ‘moments that matter’ to both the customer and the bank. Given the changing dynamics of the offline-to-online narratives, it is critical to ensure seamless sales and services experiences to up the ante and grow in digital maturity.”

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