More than three quarters (78%) of respondents believe their organisation is unprepared to react and adapt to unforeseen challenges, COVID-19 being one such example. As a result, over one in three (35%) executives are focused on improving their organisation’s resilience to future disruption through implementing new agile technology.

Over half (52%) of consumers now demand a more personalised experience from their bank and, as a result, financial institutions have had to re-evaluate how they tailor the customer journey. However, almost half (47%) of executives say they do not have access to the right information to deliver an exceptional customer experience, with almost two in five (39%) struggling to unify their customer data across platforms and channels.

Therefore, a third (33%) of senior executives expect to increase spend on digital transformation projects that focus on improving customer retention rates. In addition, 31% of executives say establishing a strong customer experience is a significant reason for implementing artificial intelligence and machine learning tools.

Improving the speed of delivery of products is the main factor (40%) driving increased spend in digital transformation projects. For example, when making lending decisions for customers, over a quarter (26%) of senior executives struggle to make timely decisions.

According to the result of the research, there is a lack of understanding of the benefits new technology can bring to financial institutions; in fact, 31% of respondents state this is the main barrier for implementing it within their organisation. Besides, more than a quarter (28%) of senior executives feel there is a lack of internal knowledge or expertise around the benefits of new technology and therefore, limited internal desire for new projects.

Finally, a third of executives (33%) are looking to increase spend on digital transformation to improve their organisations’ ESG efforts. While only 37% of organisations are establishing carbon neutral goals, less than 1% noted they were doing nothing in response to the pressures of ESG.