By Cyber Era NG Special Correspondent
The pandemic-accelerated increase in digital transactions is here to stay and businesses must continue to transform their operations as they head into 2022. According to Experian’s latest Global Insights Report, there has been a 25 per cent increase in online activity since COVID-19 and that number continues to hold steady.
“For the past 12 months, we’ve monitored the significant and sustainable shift toward ecommerce and digital financial services,” said global managing director of Decision Analytics for Experian, Steve Wagner. “The increase in digital activity has remained persistent, and consumers are staying online even with the return of physical shopping and banking.”
The study also found that as people begin to spend again consumer loyalty to online businesses is weakening. 61 per cent of consumers say they are staying with the same online service provider they used prior to the pandemic. This a decrease of 6 percent from one year ago.
“Dwindling customer loyalty along with heighted customer expectations and increased competition could mean potential revenue loss or gain. Business must find solutions to improve digital engagement and customer acquisition,” added Wagner.
Companies are leveraging advanced technologies to improve the digital customer experience and grow their business including digital credit risk decisioning, passive authentication, artificial intelligence and more. According to our research, 90 per cent of companies are investing in business automation, 76 per cent are improving or rebuilding their analytics models and 65 per cent intend to increase fraud budgets.
To develop the study, Experian interviewed 3,000 consumers and 900 businesses across 10 countries around the world including Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom and United States on insights related to consumer and business economic outlooks, financial well-being, online behavior and more. This report is the fourth wave in a longitudinal study exploring the major shifts in consumer behavior and business strategy throughout COVID-19.
Additional findings from the report include:
- Nearly 10 per cent of consumers are spending more and putting less away in retirement or emergency savings than a year ago
- Half of consumers (49%) conducted personal banking and payment activities online regularly
- Adoption of AI has risen from 69 per cent to 74 per cent and machine learning from 68 per cent to 73 per cent in one year
- 50 per cent of companies are exploring the use of expanded data sources
