At the beginning of 2021, a study by the European Commission estimated that 60% of Europeans (aged 16 to 74) had used video calling in the previous three months, with percentages peaking at over 80% in Cyprus (85%) and the Netherlands (83%).
After the acceleration during the most acute phase of the health crisis, this new habit has continued to progress, due to the installation of teleworking in particular.
European banks are slow to take action: of the 88 European banks evaluated by D-Rating in 2022, barely one in four (27%) offer their customers the option of contacting an advisor by video call.
And customers can only do so through the bank’s website as through its retail banking app for 11 of them: four French banks (Banque Populaire, Caisse d’Epargne, CIC and Crédit Mutuel), two German banks (Deutsche Bank and HVB), two Italian banks (BNL and Widiba), one Dutch bank (Rabobank) and two Belgian banks (Beobank and BNP Paribas Fortis).
The nationalities in which this possibility is most frequent are also among the EU countries that have most adopted video call: the Netherlands (75% of the banks studied by D-Rating and 83% of video call users) and Spain (50% and 78%). In these both countries, the proportion was 0% in 2021.
D-Rating also noted significant improvements in Belgium (from 8% to 15%), in Germany (from 11% to 17%), in France (from 21% to 33%) or, in a more spectacular way, in Italy (from 9% to 42%).
It is all the more surprising that this service remains not offered by any of the 17 Scandinavian and Nordic banks studied, considering that Norwegians, Finns, Swedes and Danes combine the highest levels of adoption for internet banking as for Video call usages.
