A Path of Roses and Financial Literacy: Exploring the Usability of UK's Digital Banking Services to Improve Younger Adult Adoption

Abstract

Digital retail banking is a prominent method for customers to interact with their banks. However, over the last decade the banking industry has experienced a slowing of digital retail banking adoption rates worldwide, especially in younger adults. Scholars attribute this adoption slowdown on the dissimilar growth of adoption rates and development maturity of digital retail banking applications, where the adoption rates have summited faster than development maturity. As UK banks are advancing their capabilities in digital banking, to the extent of replacing traditional branches with self-service kiosks, it becomes essential to design usable applications for customers. In retail banking, younger customers tend to continue banking as they age with the institution of their first business, hence it becomes essential for banking institutions to provide mature digital services to attract and retain the digital natives. A focussed survey and interviews conducted by the research team indicates that younger adults find the current user-interfaces impede cognitive and visual access to information and are not user-specific. Additionally, it was also found that their lack of financial knowledge and information deters them from using various features and products provided digitally by the banks. Therefore, it appears that inculcation of accessible financial information and user-specificities into the design of digital banking applications, in addition to offering giveaways could improve user adoption rates in young adults.