The digital revolution in the banking sector: challengers and desertification of branches

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According to Statista.com, the use of online contact methods and the preference for mobile banking will increase steadily until 2024. The trend will take on notable dimensions in the Asian market (Far East and China), which will see the number of active users jump from 805 million (2020) to one billion (2024). Although Asia in 2020 represented the largest market for online banking, the countries with the highest penetration rate are all European (South Korea ranked sixth, with a penetration rate of 74%).

The trend towards widespread digitalisation of banking services therefore seems macedonia whatsapp resource unstoppable and contributes to imposing new logics in the design of relationships between banks and customers .

On the one hand, online banking provides users with a quick and easy way to conduct banking transactions, without having to physically visit a branch. On the other hand, as more and more customers conduct their banking transactions remotely, banks are progressively reducing the number of branches , which saves a lot of money on maintenance costs. Over the past decade, commercial banks in the United States have closed more than 10,400 branches.

Even in Italy, as in the rest of Western countries, we are witnessing a sort of “desertification” of branches , with more than 4 million Italians, about 7% of the total, who do not even have a bank branch reachable in a reasonable time. In 3,062 municipalities, almost 40% of the total Italian ones, there are no longer branches of any credit institution. This is the situation described in a report by FABI, the Autonomous Federation of Italian Bankers, which highlights how banks have progressively reduced their territorial presence also due to the transition of many services to digital platforms.