The Future of Self-Service Technologies in Retail Banking

Self-service technologies have had a large impact on retail banking. The central objective of this study was to profile the future diffusion levels for a number of these self-service technologies: some of which are established and some of which are still in the pilot stage. To achieve this objective, a Delphi study was conducted with leading experts from both banks and technology supplying companies in New Zealand. This sample was split into five relevant panels. The results suggested that transaction-based services, for which banks traditionally charged a relatively low fee, are moving away from human tellers and towards selfservice technology. This is freeing up time for human tellers, who are now being trained in the giving of advice related to high involvement banking services, and cross-selling. Fees for this new service have increased, and will increase, accordingly. Surprisingly, there were few major differences in the diffusion estimates across the panels -although the technology suppliers were consistently more optimistic than the bankers when it came to their estimates of the implementation and acceptance of self-service technology.