As consumers increasingly expect to complete bank interactions online, a survey commissioned by Lightico indicates that creating end-to-end digital journeys continues to be a struggle for many banks. Lightico, a tech company that digitizes processes like signatures and document submission, found that bank customers are often required to go into a brick-and-mortar branch after starting an online interaction. 

“A lot of interactions, especially during the onboarding process, are a lot heavier on faxing paperwork or coming to a branch,” said Eytan Morgenstern, director of media communications at Lightico. According to Morgenstern, customers care more about whether they have to break the digital process, than the number of digital features a bank offers. 

The survey, which asked consumers if they had to go into a branch after starting an interaction with their bank online, found that Capital One and JPMorgan Chase were least likely to refer their customers to a branch, with only 38% and 38.2% of their customers, respectively, breaking a digital interaction to head to a branch.  

Banks that did poorly in the survey include U.S. Bank and Bank of America. According to the data, 81.1% of U.S. Bank customers and 71.9% of Bank of America customers had to break a digital interaction to go into a branch. 

The survey also asked customers if they had to print, scan or fax a document to their bank to complete an interaction begun online. TD Bank performed the best, with only 28.6% of customers required to move a digital interaction over to paper. Wells Fargo came in second with 30.1%. The worst-performing banks were U.S. Bank with 72.6% and Bank of Montreal with 62.5%.  

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Morgenstern said not all bank interactions can be treated the same, and in some situations customers are more likely to go to a branch.  

“If you look at all those [customers] who had a broken digital journey and were redirected to a branch, it probably involved more complicated processes, like onboarding or possibly taking out a large loan,” he said. 

Respondents were also asked how likely they were to switch banks. PNC Bank performed the best, with only 18.5% of customers saying they would switch banks, followed by Capital One with 26%. U.S. Bank, with 65.1%, had the highest percentage of customers willing to switch followed by Bank of America, with 55.4%. 

More than 1,000 respondents, chosen at random, participated in the survey conducted in 2019. According to Morgenstern, 98% of respondents were affiliated with a bank of some kind. 

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