In one year (September 21 to September 22), the number of users of mobile banking applications grew by 8.6% in Western Europe[1]. The average number of sessions per user per month increased by 4.6%, and the average duration of each session raised by 2.5%. While, the time spent on the apps of the 107 European banks surveyed by D-Rating[2] grew by 16.5% between September 2021 and September 2022.
The study offers a 3D vision of the digitalization of banking behaviors:
- Taken as a whole, the rate of conversion to digital of customers, but also, observed at the level of each brand, the capacity of client acquisition (via the number of users);
- Level of daily adoption of digital channels (through the number of sessions per month) ;
- Ability to generate additional value, beyond the management of current operations, through complex savings or credit products, whose online management requires a greater number of manipulations (hence the observation of the average duration of sessions).
For network banks, this study also provides information on their willingness to cut the number of their branches, and at the same time optimize their management costs.
[1] Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom
[2] On the data.ai database (ex-App Annie)
A Europe of digital banking split in two
Taking this analysis to its logical conclusion means putting each bank back into its national context, in order to take into account the differences that exist from one country to another, not only in the level of digitalization, but also in the intensity of competition and in the trend, more or less sustained, towards multi-banking.
This first approach reveals a Europe of digital banking split in two:
- Digital adoption already fully achieved in the North (Benelux, Scandinavia and to a lesser extent Germany), with a high number of sessions per month and a slower progression of new users;
- The phenomenon of catching up is still underway in the South (Spain, France, Italy, Portugal) as well as in the United Kingdom, resulting in the opposite behavior;
Caixa Bank vs. BBVA: Innovation pays off in digital adoption
As part of its analysis of the digital performance of European retail banks, D-Rating’s Business Intelligence department carries out a daily follow-up of the innovation brought to the mobile applications of the various European groups (analysis of releases bringing a real functional improvement vs. purely technical updates intended for the correction of bugs, classification, enrichment by a commentary of the analysts, integration of screenshots[1] …).
For example, in the case of the Spanish leaders, BBVA and Caixa Bank, the former made only six significant improvements to its local applications between June 2021 and September 2022, while the latter made more than six times as many in the same period.
[1] The service is available online on the front office D-Rating: https://customer.d-rating.fr/marketalerts
In the case of Caixa Bank, these developments have focused on fifteen areas to improve the application’s UX (Interface update, Personalization, Smart assistant, etc.), but more than two-thirds have also focused on the core of the banking business: improving the management of « everyday banking » (Payment, Transfer, Alerting, Card, Branches Info, Personalization, etc.) and access to/management of products that go beyond that (Financial products, Pension Savings Account, Insurance, etc.).
The result in terms of digital usage metrics appears particularly convincing.
On one hand, it is only on the average duration of the sessions that BBVA outperforms the average of Spanish banks.
On the other hand, Caixa Bank’s performance appears to be well above the market in terms of the number of users of its banking applications and the average duration of sessions. And Caixa maintains a number of sessions per month higher than the Spanish market average (33.0 vs. 30.5) or BBVA’s (32.0), despite a lower growth than its competitors (+7.2% vs. +10.3% for the whole market and +10.2% for BBVA).
[1] Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom
[2] On the data.ai database (ex-App Annie)
[3] The service is available online on the front office D-Rating: https://customer.d-rating.fr/marketalerts
