Nearly two-thirds of consumers in Europe (63%) have abandoned a digital bank application in the past year, compared with 40% in 2019, according to new research.

At the same time, the number now using a mobile-first financial service has increased from 30% to 47% over the same period, with 69% of these users saying they are “happier than before”.

The Battle to Onboard 2020 report — produced by digital identity provider Signicat —  also shows that 28% of consumers feel that financial service onboarding processes are “longer than they expected”, 26% consider them “difficult” and more than two-thirds of respondents (69%) said they “consider mobile-first providers to be better than more traditional providers”.

Those aged 18-24 “show little tolerance for anything other than fast digital onboarding, with 36% of people in this age range finding onboarding processes take longer than they expected and 22% saying they are “deterred by too much detail”.

The report also looks at the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on consumer expectations, discovering that 41% “found themselves unable to access essential financial services during the pandemic, due to inaccessibility or digital unavailability”, and that 68% “see pandemic-driven change as inevitable and expect 100% digital onboarding to be introduced”.

“Institutions have clearly improved their onboarding processes,” Signicat CEO Asger Hattel says. “But customer expectations continue to outpace reality, largely due to the digital-first onboarding experience offered by challenger banks and fintechs.”

The Battle to Onboard 2020 is based on a survey of 4,000 adults in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Netherlands and the UK

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