Banks Fret Over Prospects

Banks Fret Over Prospects

8. Competition

Banks have become more sanguine about competition from outside their industry. At 66 percent of respondents worried about competition (from 73 percent last year), fear still runs rampant.

The structural change being forced through by digitization is hitting retail lenders first, most respondents agree. Forty-nine percent believe that payments as a business will be hardest hit, following by investment advice, lending, and wealth management.

9. New Threats

Then there are new threats which have emerged as offshoots of digitization. Thirty-seven percent of respondents believe that marketplaces and exchange platforms are their worst nightmare – regional banks, in particular, are horrified at the prospect of losing interest income if they are cut out of mortgage lending by online providers.

Twenty-eight percent of those surveyed – and 40 percent of cantonal banks – view blockchain as the biggest threat to their business. This is ironic given that the distributed ledger technology has yet to be successfully applied in finance in a substantial way. Only 13 percent of banks view web-based and mobile payment apps as their biggest threat.