Only 24 per cent of banks in EMEA have created and executed a holistic end-to-end digital transformation strategy to engage customers.

That’s according to the ‘Digital-Ready Bank’ study, conducted by IDC Financial Insights for SAP, which surveyed 250 retail and corporate banks across the region. It found that while 96 per cent of respondents had completed some kind of digital transformation initiative, there remained room for improvement.

One in five of the banks surveyed currently employed a chief digital officer (CDO), but IDC predicted this would rise to one in two by 2020. The study also showed a positive correlation between the early involvement of IT and digital transformation success rates – 57 per cent of projects where IT was brought in at the first stages of a transformation initiative were deemed successful by the research respondents.

Some 40 per cent of the banks indicated that digital transformation remained a front-office initiative aimed at improving customer experience, while one in five said that their digital transformation primarily included infrastructure work.

Laurence Leyden, general manager for the financial services business in EMEA at SAP, said: “For digital transformation to become ingrained in a bank’s DNA and strategy, there needs to be a champion – and that is the chief digital officer. The role of the CDO is still new and maturing, but it should be focused on aligning different segments of the organisation and different technology processes around one common goal – greater customer engagement and retention.”

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