The findings, taken from Signicat’s Battle to On-board III report, show that financial institutions such as banks, insurers and credit card issuers are losing more than half of their potential customers (55%) if applications take longer than this to complete.

The most common frustration points when applying for a service is the amount of personal information required (31%) and the length of time it takes (28%). Moreover, consumers regularly abandon these applications, and it doesn’t take long to lose most potential customers:

• 12% have abandoned after 5 minutes

• 40% have abandoned after 10 minutes

• 70% have abandoned after 20 minutes

• 86% have abandoned after 30 minutes

• 93% have abandoned after 60 minutes

Given that around one in three (29%) applications take more than 20 minutes to complete, many providers are not meeting this challenge and are losing customers as a result.

To stay competitive and meet this challenge, financial institutions are advised to use existing digital identity credentials, like those from eID schemes such as BankID and iDEAL, and biometrics. 58% of consumers have some form of electronic ID, and biometric data is considered trustworthy by 57% of consumers. With a third (34%) of respondents having the impression that only a few providers are taking advantage of biometric data, this presents a huge opportunity for institutions to accelerate the onboarding process.

The third edition of Signicat’s regular study is based on a survey of 3,500 adults across Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and Sweden on their onboarding experience with retail bank accounts, insurance and credit cards.