Hexaware Mobiquity Report Uncovers New Barriers to Reaching Banking ESG Goals

Today, Hexaware Mobiquity, a digital consultancy that designs and delivers innovative digital products and services for the world’s leading brands, released the third part of its annual Global Benchmark for Sustainable Banking Report. Part three compares how challenger and traditional banks view the key trends, opportunities and challenges to achieving more sustainable banking operations. 600 C-suite banking executives across the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia were surveyed.

In recent years, both traditional and challenger banks have cited sustainability as a key concern at the board level. However, the focus has shifted this year to prioritize innovating digital technologies and hiring strategies to enable banks to keep up with increased ESG demands. In fact, both U.S. challenger and traditional banks claimed limited access to talent and expertise as their number one barrier to adopting more sustainable practices and behaviors this year. More specifically, challenger bank executives cite talent management as their top concern at the board level while traditional bank executives cite digital transformation.

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Furthermore, the percentage of both US challenger and traditional banks reporting on sustainability challenges at the board level fell from nearly 95% in 2022, to just over 65% in 2023. ESG representation at the board level for both US challenger and traditional banks also dropped significantly from around 95% in 2022, to under 75% in 2023, and executives at both stated that overall sustainability is a far less important part of their business strategy this year.

“This year has presented the banking industry with tremendous challenges, leading to an industry-wide reprioritization of digital strategies to meet ESG goals,” said Peter-Jan van de Venn, VP Global Digital Banking at Hexaware Mobiquity. “By aligning technology and business strategies with sustainability goals, challenger and traditional banks can tackle two problems at once, playing a pivotal role in fostering sustainable development, addressing global environmental challenges and driving sustainable practices that contribute to a greener future despite the current economic climate.”

Additional Key Findings Include:

• The US is falling behind in taking steps to foster sustainable behaviors – globally, traditional banks are ahead or at the same level as challenger banks.
• Banks in all regions are most often developing digital applications for clients to be sustainable and digital solutions to create sustainable outcomes.
• Apart from traditional banks in the Netherlands, all banks are embracing emerging technologies such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, GenAI, cloud and data analytics to achieve greater sustainability.
• In 2022 traditional banks were engaging the most with Metaverse technologies – that interest has slowed down substantially in 2023 across all regions and was down nearly 30% among US challenger and traditional banks.

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