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Poland is often regarded as a laboratory for the banking of the future, as many European banks test new technologies there and Polish institutions are quick to adopt them. Polish banks are highly innovative and modern, offering their customers efficient processes, up-to-date technologies and a wide range of financial products.
Three factors contributed to the acceleration of digitalisation: the rise of fintechs, EU regulation introducing the concept of open banking through PSD2, and the challenges caused by the pandemic.
The next stage of accelerated digital transformation in the financial market may come with regulations enabling leasing services to use electronic signatures and eliminate paper-based processes. COVID-19 has also changed the shopping habits of Poles, with more customers moving towards online purchases. Sales through digital channels are expected to continue growing dynamically.
Banks that were already digitally advanced are simplifying their offerings even further and exploring new sales channels, including partnerships with courier companies.
Polish banks pay significant attention to their digital gateways. Onboarding new customers can be completed fully remotely. Banks develop their own online and mobile processes or implement third-party solutions.
Face recognition solutions developed by fintechs such as Revolut have been successfully incorporated into banking systems. These technologies are used not only for individual customers. More options are also becoming available for business and corporate customers, supported by a growing number of chatbots.
Almost all major banks in Poland use chatbots to support customers and reduce the workload of employees in areas such as deposits and investments, loan processing and general Q&A. These solutions are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
For example, the Moje ING mobile app includes functionality that allows users to navigate using the voice-driven Google Assistant.
Remote onboarding became crucial during the pandemic lockdown, and Polish banks were well prepared for it. The full onboarding process can take around 15 minutes and consists of two steps.
The first is the verification of personal data, ID photos and information stored in central banking databases. The system assesses whether the entered data is correct and, based on this, determines whether the app user can become a customer.
After successful verification, the contract is finalised using an electronic signature. This ensures that a person who has successfully completed the remote account creation process can immediately access the bank’s services and products.
Once onboarding is complete, there are very few operations that require a visit to a branch. Opening a savings account, ordering cards, making deposits, applying for loans, leasing or factoring, making investments, buying insurance and many other products and services are available digitally.
There are two main exceptions. The mortgage process still requires a final signature, although the application process is almost fully remote. The second exception is leasing, where legal requirements have traditionally kept parts of the process offline. Companies are, however, working on solutions that would enable electronic signatures in this area as well.
The example of Alior Bank demonstrates how digitalisation can support growth. Alior Bank was established during the financial crisis in 2008 by one of Poland’s best-known banking managers and grew to become one of the ten largest banks in the market.
The manager later left Alior to build a new digital banking platform, Vodeno, which is available as a white-label solution for digital banking.
The entire mobile onboarding process is designed to be fast and customer-friendly. The platform is cloud-based and supports virtually all banking operations and processes.
The system is used by the former Belgian branch of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which was renamed and transformed into Aion Bank, a fully mobile bank operating in the European Union. It charges customers a fixed monthly fee for services rather than transaction-based fees.
Compared with Germany, where regional banks have a strong position, regional banks in Poland have lost popularity partly because they have lagged behind in digitalisation.
However, the digital trend is also gaining momentum in this segment. Due to their relatively small branch networks, online and mobile channels offer smaller, mostly cooperative banks an opportunity to grow.
A small regional bank in Toruń renamed itself Nicolaus Bank to become more recognisable and strengthen its digital positioning. Other regional banks are following a similar path.
The Polish cooperative banking group SGB has developed a highly rated and innovative digital platform.
The platform enables integration between many different IT systems used by SGB Cooperative Banks. It addresses one of the main barriers to technological development in cooperative banking: the large number of systems and the lack of compatibility between them.
An API was created with both banks and customers in mind. In the future, it is expected to make it easier to apply for loans online, accelerate the flow of information and documents, shorten procedures, simplify and strengthen data verification, and enable customers to open bank accounts through both mobile applications and web channels.
COVID-19 accelerated many of these changes. Digitalisation had already been part of broader restructuring efforts, but the process gained momentum during the lockdown.
Financial institutions were forced to digitalise communication and service channels in order to stay in touch with customers and protect employees working in branch offices.
Many banks demonstrated how digitalisation and end-to-end remote processes can benefit both financial institutions and their customers. These solutions support a more customer-oriented approach and can also positively influence banking performance.
This may also be relevant for markets such as Germany, where the return on equity (ROE) indicator has historically been among the lowest in Europe.