A new KPMG report says banks can only survive in the highly digitised era if their product offerings are designed in a way that meets the preference of millennials.

The report titled: “Heightened customer expectation in the new normal and beyond,” said the future of customer experience will be insight-led, digitally-enabled and would require customer-centric culture as well as compelling value propositions.

“Banks must deploy cross-cutting customer strategies that are born out of data analytics about customers as an essential tool for growth.

Data is the new oil and digital is the icing on the cake,” Robert Dzato, KPMG’s Financial Services Strategy Lead, said in his presentation on the report.

The 2020 KPMG Banking Industry Customer Experience Survey also showed customer’s drift from banks’ branch usage to digital channels and internet banking.

It also identified resolution, integrity, empathy, expectations, personalisation and time and effort as the six key pillars to drive seamless customer experience by the banks.

According to the report, millennials remain the biggest catch for banks that want to leverage digitisation to drive growth and profitability.

Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Association of Bankers (GAB) John Awuah, commenting on the report said banks were ready for the new era of banking with most of them ticking the right boxes of remote banking long before COVID-19 pandemic struck.

The next phase, he noted, will be investing in systems that will enable banks to mine and analyse data to inform decisions on customer satisfaction for growth.

“Banks invested in digitisation prior to COVID-19 but failure to market those investments slowed its adoption; fortunately, the pandemic has hastened the uptake of digital products,” he said.

To Mr. Awuah, customers have moved from being loyal to brands to becoming loyal to experience they receive and for that reason banks will need to pay attention to the experience journey of the people they serve.

But in doing so, he warned that, banks must not trade employee satisfaction for customer experience since the success of the experience offerings will depend on their internal staff, especially the front liners.

Chief Executive Officer of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB), Charles Ofori-Acquah, in his remarks encouraged banks to forge strong partnerships with fintechs to offer the right mix of experience to their customers.

“Open banking is here with us and banks must cooperate with fintechs on this agenda; they are not competition,” he emphasised.

Mr. Ofori-Acquah added: “There is also responsible banking; profit must go with purpose and that can be achieved with customer-centered banking.”