Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending, budgets and investment plans. In 2020, we conducted in-person interviews with 111 client executives within retail banking, who indicate a continued focus on increasing customer adoption of digital as a primary channel.

Interviews were conducted before and after the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, providing unique insights into evolving priorities. We provide a short summary of some of these insights here.

Customer adoption of digital still dominates

Increasing customer adoption of digital as a primary channel is the top trend by impact once again in 2020. While other top trends also remain the same for 2020, each shifts in impact, with digital strains on legacy infrastructure, security threats and omni-channel demand for personalized services rising in impact, and mounting regulatory and control reform decreasing.

2020 top trends by impact

  1. Increasing customer adoption of digital as primary channel
  2. Digital transformation demands straining legacy banking infrastructure
  3. Growing threat of cyber and other financial crimes
  4. Omni-channel demand for personalized services
  5. Mounting regulatory and control reform / burden

 

Post-pandemic declaration trends show rise in omni-channel and digital adoption

For interviews conducted after the pandemic declaration by WHO on March 11, 2020, omni-channel demand for personalized services, increasing adoption of digital as a primary channel, and the strain of digital transformation demands on legacy banking infrastructure all rose in impact as a trend (+18%, +17% and +16%, respectively), compared to earlier interviews

Results from digital strategies remain low

This year, 99% of retail bank executives say they have a digital strategy in place, up from 94% last year, and 27% are producing results from their digital strategies. In addition, 45% have a strategy that extends across the enterprise, while a further 33% report their enterprise strategy extends to their external ecosystems.

Less than half of executives cite highly agile business models for digitization

When it comes to addressing digitization, 43% of executives say their business model is highly agile (score of 8 or higher on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the highest), an increase of 5% from 2019.

Interest in substantial managed services dramatically rises after pandemic declaration

This year, we asked retail banking executives to share why they use managed services and how they plan to leverage them. Top reasons cited include driving practical, continuous innovation, business agility and cost savings. Responses concerning plans for using managed services vary before and after the pandemic declaration, as in the example shown.

% planning to leverage substantial managed applications in 3 years 
53% 2020 post declaration
31% 2020 prior to declaration

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization

2020 CGI Client Global Insights for Retail Banking

(Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied, showing 3 out of 10 available attributes)

For the third year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. For most attributes, business leaders report lower satisfaction levels with their internal IT compared to IT leaders. Consistently introducing applicable innovations for the business has the lowest average score at 5.9, but this is up 0.2 pts from 2019.

Learn more about the 2020 CGI Client Global Insights.

Learn more about CGI in Retail Banking.

Speak with a CGI expert

To consult with one of our industry experts to learn more about client insights and CGI’s perspectives on business and technology trends, contact us.