Nine Indian banks have been recognised as “Digital Champions” in Deloitte’s sixth Global Digital Banking Maturity (DBM) survey, which honoured 40 banks worldwide.
Since 2022, India’s DBM Index has climbed from 43% to 59%, a 16-percentage-point increase driven by notable gains of 9.8 percentage points in day-to-day banking and 3.4 percentage points in expanding customer relationships. This progress reflects Indian banks’ growing digital maturity and their focus on customised advisory, rapid technological advancements, AI integration and beyond-banking offerings.
The biennial Global DBM study assessed 349 banks across 44 key markets on their retail-banking maturity via three channels: public websites, internet banking and mobile banking (including application and messenger-service interfaces). Employing a mystery-shopping methodology, the survey evaluated banks across six customer-journey steps: information gathering, account opening, customer onboarding, day-to-day banking, expanding relationships and end-of-relationship. The latest edition also includes user-experience insights as an additional benchmarking segment.
Outperformed Global Peers
Indian Digital Champions have outperformed global peers across most journey steps, with India’s overall DBM Index surpassing the global average by 20 percentage points. Indian champions scored particularly high in information gathering, customer onboarding, day-to-day banking and overall user experience.
Despite these successes, there remains room for improvement, especially in day-to-day banking and expanding relationships. Banks are encouraged to enhance personal finance management tools, implement conversational solutions for hyper-personalised support and refine product cross-selling strategies.
“As we unveil the sixth edition of the Digital Banking Maturity report, the world’s largest and most comprehensive study of its kind, we are proud to share that Indian banks have made significant progress across digital banking services, outpacing the global average on most fronts, aligning with our 2022 predictions,” said Himanish Chaudhuri, partner and financial services industry leader at Deloitte India. “In only its second year of participation, India has already asserted itself as a rising force among global powerhouses such as the US, China, Brazil and the European Union. This year’s survey spans 349 banks across six continents. This remarkable trajectory underscores India’s growing capability to shape the future of digital banking. With regulatory support, the rise of GenAI, industry convergence and a sharper focus on fraud prevention, Indian banks are well-positioned to support the country’s vision for a ‘Viksit Bharat.’”
The sector’s digital transformation is underpinned by a favourable regulatory environment, expanding digital public infrastructure, increased investment and spending capacity, and enhanced internet connectivity and mobile penetration. However, it faces challenges such as macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties, rising deposit costs and concerns over credit quality.
A deeper dive into day-to-day banking reveals that transfers and payments grew by 2.4 percentage points since 2022, outpacing the 1 percentage-point global average. Personal finance management improved by 1.9 percentage points versus the global rise of 0.1 percentage points, and account and product management services increased by 2 percentage points against a 1 percentage-point global benchmark. Card management services also saw a roughly 2 percentage-point rise, driven by seamless services and a secure banking experience compared with a 3 percentage-point global average. In the expanding-relationships category, beyond-banking offerings rose by 1 percentage point (vs. 0.1 percentage points globally), while ecosystem and account-aggregation services registered a modest 0.5 percentage-point increase.
