UAE and Middle East Banks Now Have a Way to Benchmark their Digital Banking Offerings

In response to digital mass adoption, Banks undergo drastic renovation in their digital channels, trying to remain competitive and avoid disruption. High-street Banks, Challenger Banks, even FinTech companies, often wonder:

• What functionality is offered by my competitors and what is the UX they offer, what is my gap from them
• How is my Bank positioned among my local and international competitor Banks
•  How are the other Banks positioned in the market

Never an easy task to answer the above questions at any given time. Banks know that well. It is difficult, if not impossible. It is not easy (never was) to keep track of the digital banking offerings of other Banks and know where your Bank stands compared to them. It becomes even more difficult with time, as Banks heavily invest more and more in their digital channels and add more and more functionality online.

Solution

We recently came across Scientia’s FinTech Insights (FI), a web and subscription-based service that exhaustively analyses and compares UAE Digital Banking offerings and of the most prominent Banks and FinTechs worldwide.

Fintech Insights measures functionality

The FI service uses real Bank accounts for the analysis. The main report for each Bank under analysis is the detailed description of all transactions and functions, drilled into submenus, all the way to their finest detail. Each single function and transaction is examined in details, followed by step-by-step analysis with short videos showing actual usage, as in the following figure:

Figure 1 . Short video showing a real cutomer’s steps in executing a money transfer transaction in a Bank

Drill-into a Bank is available so an FI user can go to a deeper detail with a few clicks:

Figure 2 . First level functionality drill-in, per channel

In the above figure, the 3 horizontal curved lines indicate the “Min”, the “Avg”, and “Max” Bank in functionality for each channel, among the Banks in the same Market.

Fintech Insights measures UX

The User Experience (UX) of a given digital offering is also evaluated for every Bank. Important user cases of every functionality item are evaluated using Scientia’s unique and innovative methodology. Each user case is depicted graphically as a detailed flowchart and its UX is evaluated to a number, by attaching “penalty points” to each user action, as shown in the figure below. Summing up all user cases of a Bank results to a number that makes the UX value for the whole Bank offering. The user has also the ability to test the UX of the offering on different customer-personas, by making up a different penalty point “list” per persona.

Figure 3 . Flowchart showing the steps of a Use Case (money transfer transaction), with the penalty points in every step

Drill-into a Bank and showing the Use Case evaluations per channel, is also available:

Figure 4 . First level Use Cases drill-in, per channel

Figure 5 . Second level Use Cases drill-in, in the iOS channel

Fintech Insights compares and benchmarks Banks in both functionality and UX

The FI service compares Banks across all their available functionality items and/or UX, returning a total number for each Bank:

Figure 6 . Banks are shown with the sum of the total functionality items they offer

A Bank can be compared head-to-head with another either in functionality or in UX score:

Figure 7 . Head-to-Head comparison of Banks, based on functionality

Fintech Insights positions Banks in the market

Each Bank with associated media/channels is positioned among its digital competitors (its market) in the Scientia “Quadrant”, that places Banks based on functionality vs. UX score.

Figure 8. Scientia’s Quadrant, where the triangle mark indicates the relative position of a Bank and its channel (iOS here) among its market. Hovering over marks (and in a side-legend) the Bank names appear.

How can a Bank use Fintech Insights

A Bank gets an annual license to use Fintech Insights, that comes with a pair of credentials. That’s all a Bank needs to use Fintech Insights.

Fintech Insights keeps Banks content always current

New Banks are introduced into the Fintech Insights service every week enriching the comparisons. The content gets continuously updated, every time a Bank changes/adds something to its offering. The richness and exhaustiveness of functionality and UX, along with so many different comparison angles, make the assets of the Fintech Insights service.

Why Fintech Insights

A Bank stays up to date with its competition and sees how its relative positioning in the market changes at any time. Easy to check what other Banks do and compare offerings in detail. It also helps build and maintain a road map for new product development to catch up with the best in class.

Fintech Insights is in essence the dashboard on the PC screen that Execs of all Banks wanted, easy to watch their digital Banking competition and know at any point how they fare, and how they position in the market.

Featured image credit: Unsplash