Asia Pacific markets have seen a shift towards digital banking during the past few years. Nowadays, banks are placing more effort on mobile banking, such as improving security and convenience of their applications and enhance the user experience to drive engagement in the channel.

As data analytics becomes nearly ubiquitous in most parts of consumers’ digital lives, leading banks are providing digitised solutions that deliver the right offer at the right time, predict fraud so they can reduce risk, and boost cross-sell rates.

Declining profitability from lending is forcing Japanese banks to rethink product and service strategies whilst innovative technology adoption is helping to maintain high service levels

The gross retail banking income for the entire region will grow by 8% by the end of 2017 after showing a year-on-year growth of 7.5% in 2016 and 10% in 2015.

Emirates NBD’s efforts towards digitisation have enabled customers to bank with more ease through new account propositions. From Shake n’ Save to Fitness and other new mobile based applications, the bank is putting itself at the forefront of digital services.

Financial institutions are starting to use APIs to create important linkages between their products and services and their customers and important third party value providers. Early movers to stand to gain mindshare of both customers and the wider application developer community.

DBS Group’s retail and wealth business has been accelerating income generation since 2013. However, the bank continues to face an uphill struggle with some of its overseas retail markets.

While many financial institutions in emerging markets are trying to strike the right balance between their physical footprints and digital presence, leading banks in mature markets are proving that digital transformation can boost profitability and efficiency.

Wide discontent with conventional banks have led to the emergence of mobile-only fintech banks. However, these challenger banks are struggling to expand their customer reach, putting doubts whether they can stand against bigger traditional banks.

As the search for efficiency intensifies amid a slowdown in economic growth, banks continue to leverage technology to relieve cost pressures and provide increasingly complex working capital solutions that their clients demand.

The Asian Banker recently updated the bank profile of Asia Commercial Bank. The bank is focused on boosting its competitiveness in the Vietnamese market.

Despite current economic challenges, Vietnam’s banking sector has promising longer term potential due to its relatively young and increasingly affluent population.