Imagine walking into a bank, asking to open an account, and the clerk hands you a 20-page paper form, sighing heavily, you ask how long it will take, and they shrug, maybe a few weeks.
Absurd, right? But in digital banking, this happens every day. Pages take too long to load. Forms break. Features are buried in menus designed by sadists. And customers walk.
Here is a number that should terrify banks, 88 percent of users will not return to a site after a bad experience. Another one, every one euro invested in UX yields one hundred euros in revenue. Yet, somehow, banks still cling to legacy systems as if they are family heirlooms.
Ben Goldin, CEO and Founder of Plumery, has seen this firsthand. “We talk to banks who already built something, but it is fundamentally not on par with customer expectations,” he explains. “Not just functionally, but in reliability and performance too.”
In other words, banks are not just failing to innovate, they are failing to do the basics. And the cost is astronomical.
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The Cost of Bad Customer Experiences
For years, banks have thrown billions at technology while ignoring one brutal fact, a better UX can increase conversion rates by up to 400 percent. But instead of designing seamless experiences, most banks are still wrestling with fifty-year-old infrastructure, terrified to touch it in case the whole thing collapses.
Goldin and Plumery are tackling this head-on.
“Traditional banks are told they need to replace their entire core banking system to innovate,” he says. “We say, no, you do not.” You just need to decouple your digital experience from that legacy mess.
This approach of progressive modernization means banks do not have to rip and replace everything at once. Instead, they can build modern, flexible digital layers on top of their aging cores. Think of it like renovating a house, you do not need to bulldoze it to add a new kitchen.
And speed matters. “We help customers launch an MVP in two to three months,” Goldin says. For context, many banks take twelve to eighteen months just to roll out an update. That is the difference between capturing new customers today and losing them to fintechs tomorrow.
Join us at Baltic Fintech Days on April 2-3!
Customer Experience Is the New Battleground
Here is where it gets interesting, banking functionality is being commoditized. With open APIs and Banking as a Service, any fintech can tap into the same core features. What is left to compete on, customer experience.
Goldin sees hyper-personalization as the next big frontier. “It starts with the basics, seamless onboarding, fast transactions, intuitive navigation. But once that is in place, you can move to true personalization, using real-time data to shape the experience around the customer’s needs.”
But here is the catch, a one-second delay in page response can reduce conversions by seven percent. “Our focus has been to build Plumery’s architecture to optimise speed.” Customers do not just want banking that works, they want it to work instantly. And banks that ignore this reality are setting themselves up for failure.
The Future Innovate or Get Left Behind
The lesson here is brutal but simple, banks do not need more features, they need better experiences. Customers have zero patience for outdated, clunky interfaces. They want the speed and fluidity of a fintech, not the digital equivalent of a fax machine.
Plumery is proving that it is possible. By focusing on CX-first design, progressive modernization, and real-time personalization, they are giving banks, EMIs and fintechs a fighting chance in a world where customers expect nothing less than seamless, intuitive and delighful experiences.
The only question left is, will financial institutions continue to leave money on the table and customer loyalty at the door?