European Online Banking Set To Treble In Five Years

by Philip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

08 August 2001

According to a recent report issued by market analysis experts Datamonitor, over 75 million Europeans will be using online banking services by 2005. This may raise a wry smile within the e-banking community, as the last few months have been fairly lean for European online banks, and a number of standalone ventures such as ABN-Amro's MoneyPlanet and SEB's planned UK expansion have been withdrawn.

However, the research undertaken indicates that in spite of this, banks have been successful in tempting their customers onto the internet by offering value added services such as account aggregation and online assistance. The biggest challenge online banks now face, according to Datamonitor, is to build customer loyalty and leverage existing clients as effectively as possible.

The report predicted that Germany, the United Kingdom, and the combined markets of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden would continue to account for the majority of internet banking customers, but said that Italy would be the fastest growing market, with leading banks seeking to roll out e-banking services to the relatively underdeveloped market. Datamonitor also confirmed that the PC would continue to be the dominant channel for online banking for the foreseeable future, although it said that mobile banking would also experience a surge in popularity.

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