Capgemini’s new research shows most banking customers are indifferent or dissatisfied with their current banks, leading to “silent attrition” as they gradually shift to digital-first alternatives that offer more personalized, seamless experiences.
In a world where customer loyalty is increasingly rare, traditional banks face a critical challenge: a vast majority of customers are indifferent or outright dissatisfied with their current banking experiences. On a recent episode of the Banking Transformed podcast, host Jim Marous spoke with Kartik Ramakrishnan, CEO of Financial Services at Capgemini, about the eye-opening findings from their 2025 World Retail Banking Report and how institutions can attract, engage, and delight customers in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Q: Your report shows that a majority of customers are indifferent or dissatisfied with their banking experiences. What’s driving this widespread dissatisfaction?
Kartik Ramakrishnan: Our report indicates that 74% of customers are either indifferent or unhappy. Now, 50% of the 74% are indifferent, and 24% are unhappy. So, over the years, you’ll see that indifference slowly evolves into unhappiness, and then unhappiness progresses to attrition. That’s the way we see it.
Q: How is “silent attrition” impacting traditional banking relationships?
Ramakrishnan: The biggest friend of the traditional bank today is inertia. That is what has kept them going. However, if you examine some of the examples of fintechs and neobanks and their expansion, let’s take Revolut as an example. Great startup, it started in the card space. Therefore, you could easily have someone who uses Revolut as one of their products in addition to maintaining a traditional banking relationship.
But look at Revolut today, seven or eight years on; they do everything from cards to banking, wealth management, investing, and the ability to trade in crypto. You start to think about the services that are added on, and one can see a customer gradually transitioning from their traditional bank. They start with a card, add retail banking, and then offer some investing advice, and so on. Unless there is a wow experience that focuses on the customer — not just at acquisition but also during servicing — there will be a slow, gradual attrition that comes piece by piece.
Traditional vs. New Age Banking Models
Q: What’s the biggest difference between traditional banking models and what you call the “new age banking model”?
Ramakrishnan: It starts with the customer engagement model. If you think about a traditional banking model, banks tend to think in terms of products — and products that they want to offer to customers.
The other big difference is an end-to-end digital journey. We’ve discussed it as a multi-channel, omni-channel approach. There are many different names for it, but having a seamless mode of interaction with customers is what we see in a new-age banking model.
Q: How has the concept of a primary financial relationship changed in recent years?
Ramakrishnan: My daughter has friends who may have a checking account, and they get money from their parents every month. Typically, the money is deposited into the account and then immediately transferred to Venmo. And that’s their modus operandi in terms of how they handle cash, whether it’s peer-to-peer or for making a purchase.
Let’s examine the current state of the UPI, India’s payment system, and the emerging super apps. If you have a place where you can keep your deposit and no longer keep it in a checking account, you can do everything from investing to bill pay, to peer-to-peer payments, to buying something off a street vendor. I could see in the future a world where that is the standard of operation.
The Data-Action Disconnect
Q: Banks have massive amounts of data but struggle to convert it into action. What’s causing this disconnect?
Ramakrishnan: We use this concept of a flywheel to describe the lifecycle of a client. There are six steps that we talk about in terms of attract, engage and delight in terms of how a customer’s lifecycle with a bank is.
Then you get to onboarding, and whether it be credit card onboarding, checking account onboarding, or commercial banking, onboarding is an industry-wide challenge, and that’s where data is not being leveraged efficiently.
Q: What specific friction points are preventing banks from delivering seamless experiences?
Ramakrishnan: Many times, we find customers having to submit data that banks probably already have access to. They will have to submit data that someone must manually validate. So, it takes time, creates friction.
When you get to servicing, there isn’t a full, comprehensive view. There is data on the interactions that have occurred with the customer across various channels. Did the customer walk into a branch? Did the customer call? Did the customer do something on a chatbot? And they’re all potentially handled by different technology groups within the bank and different customer service groups within the bank. One doesn’t know what has happened in the other channel. Creates friction, creates frustration, and dissatisfaction.
It’s what I call the big company problem. Every one of our large clients, including the banks we work with, has several departments. And when you start to look at the KPIs of each of those departments, they tend to lose perspective at times on what each of these divisions is expected to do, because everything ultimately has to be geared towards customer delight.
Reaching Digital-First Urbanites
Q: Your report identifies digital-first urbanites as a crucial growth segment. Why are they increasingly turning to non-traditional providers?
Ramakrishnan: Banks have made several attempts with different models to get to what we call the new age banking model. Over the last decade or so, we’ve seen banks create digital native versions of themselves, attempt to do so, or start building digital capabilities that complement their existing offerings.
The example of Chase is ideal for when a bank starts from scratch, as they have no legacy to deal with. And we saw that when Goldman Sachs launched Marcus, we’ve seen that with what Chase is doing in the UK, and we’ve seen it with digital natives over and over again.
Q: What can traditional banks learn from successful digital banking launches?
Ramakrishnan: A lot of this is due to organizational setup and barriers that limit the ability of these large banks to capitalize on their full potential when they start as a fresh opportunity.
If you consider banks like Chase or several U.S.-based banks, there is an opportunity to utilize the branch as a differentiator. It’s a value-add. I’m never going to enter, and probably most urbanites won’t enter the bank to transact, but you have that physical space to bring them in to do value-added things. Those are good points of leverage for traditional large banks to create that experience for customers.
Transforming the Contact Center Experience
Q: Your research showed that only 24% of customers reported satisfactory contact center experiences. How are banks transforming their service approaches?
Ramakrishnan: That 24% number is the U.S. number. If you go outside of the U.S., it starts to fall off. I think France is like 18%. So, the satisfaction level when they call someone and actually get the service is fairly low.
It comes from a few aspects. One, the traditional wait times. Do I need to wait? Do I need to provide them with information that I believe they should already have? They know my phone number, and they know me as an individual. What else do they need? How quickly can my problem or situation be resolved?
Q: How can contact centers evolve from cost centers to growth drivers?
Ramakrishnan: I worked with one bank where we did a study of their contact center. I was shocked that despite the availability of an app and a lot of other information, the number one call that somebody actually answered for them was, “Have you received my payment?”
So, now that banks are busy answering these calls, a queue of people waits to have more pressing matters resolved, and they become frustrated. They need to find ways to balance cost and opportunity.
When you start looking at the technologies available to leverage, you can offer someone something interesting or discuss an experience they can have because they’re a card customer. If they start to view contact centers as communication enablers and distribution channels, there is a technology element that allows for the leveraging of data, analytics, and AI to increase efficiency. There is an aspect of freeing up time so the agent can be a marketer, rather than just someone who answers questions.
Building Customer-Centric Banking
Q: Which organizations are getting customer experience right in the financial services industry?
Ramakrishnan: My personal experience is that my first card in the US was a Discover Card, and I’m still a customer because I love the product. The product is simple, does what it said it would 25 years ago, and gives me cash back. Therefore, there are numerous banks and issuers that know who they are and what they want to be. Those are the ones that I see doing well.
Having a product set that says, ‘I’m targeting this segment and this is what this segment wants,’ is a common approach among many banks. From my personal experience, I bank with Chase. I’ve seen some great stuff that Chase is doing. What we have not yet seen is an attempt to bring everything together, in the way some of the neobanks have done.
Q: If you were to recommend one transformative change for a traditional bank today, what would it be?
Ramakrishnan: I’ve a dream product that I’ve always thought about. I think about a product that caters to a customer segment of one, allowing the customer to select the features they want. If I look at a card product here today, it comes with all these features. And I look at it and say, ‘I love this, I love this. I don’t really need this, I don’t need this.’
Why can’t we launch something that allows the client to specify upfront what they care about, and then we customize accordingly? So, because they don’t want features A, B, and C, we offer them a lower interest rate on purchases.
I’d start with a simple selector where customers can answer questions, and we recommend one of our existing products. However, I’d like to reach a point where I’m not reliant on a product. I’m reliant on the customer and creating something unique for them.
As traditional banks face increasing competition from digital-native challengers, the path forward lies in moving beyond product-centric thinking to truly customer-centric models. By addressing friction points in the customer journey, leveraging data effectively, and creating customized experiences, banks can transform indifferent customers into loyal advocates.
Source: The Financial Brand
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