• Jo Howes, Commercial Director at Crealogix


• 24.01.2019 05:30 am
undisclosed

Santander is just the latest in a series of high street banks to announce multiple closures of their branches, following the footsteps of NatWest and HSBC in recent years. Traditional banks are facing increasing competition from the more agile and consumer-focussed digital-only competitors, which offer the features and personalisation that consumers desire. To compete and stay relevant, every bank and building society needs to start innovating and offering differentiated features. This decision by Santander is the first step in its transition to a digital offering, and to satisfying customer demand. 

For now, the challenge for big banks is simply how to maintain reasonable feature parity with the challengers, as the feature and design gap between challengers and less technologically-agile banks, is widening. Established banks have the foundations of trust and market share to keep them ahead of the game, but they must bring the competitive fight back to the challengers by focusing on placing their customers at the heart of their business.