Digital banking through COVID in Canada: Capitalizing on consumer behavior change

The financial sector is no stranger to disruption. New technologies and customer preferences have forced institutions to continually innovate. This past year, however, introduced a major disruption by way of the pandemic. Digital banking, already growing pre-pandemic, became a necessity. Banks leapt into action to continue providing their services to customers amidst unprecedented uncertainty. Leading banks that were already employing data-driven methods to provide their range of core banking services were able to easily adapt to the new reality. Canada, with its first-rate financial institutions and incredible digital initiatives, is an ideal country to understand how banks adapted and thrived throughout this past year.

The top Canadian banks have embraced digital banking to bring innovative offerings to market. With increased competition from tech-focused neobanks and big tech companies, customer engagement is a crucial metric for financial institutions. As you will see from our interviews with Canadian executives, there is a lot of amazing work going on in this space, with digital channels driving impressive customer engagement.

We partnered with EY to produce this report. We want to thank them, along with all contributing banks, for providing their expertise and insight on the state of digital banking in Canada.