Nearly three-quarters of retail banking customers worldwide are only moderately satisfied with their main bank, or less than that. Few of them are unhappy enough to leave today, but most could be won by a competitor that does a better job on fraud protection, payments and personalised service.
That is the central finding of The Banking Expectation Gap: Global Consumer Edition, research commissioned by banking technology company Temenos from analyst firm Celent and released at Sibos in Miami this week.
Celent surveyed 2,515 banking consumers across Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and North America in mid-2026. It then set their answers against its annual Dimensions survey of technology priorities at 216 retail banks and a series of interviews with bank leaders in each region. The picture that emerges is one of demand and supply that do not line up. The Fintech Times spoke with Will Moroney, Chief Revenue Officer at Temenos, on what the findings mean for banks.
Adequate, not exceptional
Customer sentiment towards banks is middling across the board. Some 28 per cent of consumers say they are not at all satisfied or only slightly satisfied with their primary financial institution, and a further 45 per cent are only moderately satisfied. Celent calls the combined group the switchable middle: customers who have not left, but who see their bank as adequate and little more.
No region stands far apart. Europe is the most content, with 75 per cent of customers moderately or very satisfied, while Latin America and the Middle East and Africa both sit below 70 per cent. The differences within regions are sharper. In the UK and the Nordic countries, 36 per cent of customers are very satisfied, against a European average of 29 per cent. Hong Kong and Singapore lead Asia Pacific, while Japan records the lowest satisfaction in its region. In the Middle East and Africa, customers in Nigeria and South Africa are more satisfied than those in the Gulf, where digital-only banks have expanded quickly in recent years.
“Banks have benefited from inertia for a long time, but that is not the same as loyalty,” says Will Moroney, Chief Revenue Officer at Temenos. “The report shows a large group of customers who are not unhappy enough to leave today, but are open to being won over. That is the risk. If another provider offers better value, stronger digital experiences or more relevant rewards, passive dissatisfaction can quickly become switching. Banks need to act before that happens.”
The sources of that dissatisfaction are everyday ones. More than half of consumers, 53 per cent, name payment services among the things they are least satisfied with, including fast and reliable real-time payments. Security and fraud protection follows at 39 per cent, and a third or more point to value: fees, rates and the usefulness of what they are offered. In the Middle East and Africa, where unhappiness with payments is highest, the report points to system outages, delays to supposedly instant payments, a surge in digital payment fraud and the difficulty of reaching a person to resolve a complaint. In Brazil, the rapid adoption of Pix has brought fraud and slow dispute resolution with it.
What would make them move
A quarter of consumers have recently considered switching their primary bank. Asked what would make them choose another provider, 49 per cent cite better rates and fees on credit products. Two factors tie behind it on 40 per cent: fees or rewards that reflect the size or length of the customer’s relationship, and better online and mobile banking features. A higher savings rate is enough for 38 per cent, and trust in another bank ranks fifth, named by a third of respondents. Price still leads, but it no longer stands alone. Being recognised for loyalty now matters as much as the app.
Payments are the exception that shows how much banks rely on habit. They are the largest source of dissatisfaction yet a comparatively weak reason to switch, particularly in Europe and the Middle East and Africa, where dissatisfaction is highest. Celent puts that down to customer inertia, and concludes that improving payments is a way to build loyalty among existing customers instead of leaving retention to chance. Some groups are less patient. In Europe, 39 per cent of 50 to 64 year olds say they would switch for better payment services, as would 34 per cent of 30 to 39 year olds in the Middle East and Africa.
“It means treating customers as a relationship, not a set of separate products,” Moroney says. “If someone has banked with you for years, holds multiple products, or has changing financial needs, the bank should recognise that in the service, advice, pricing and rewards it offers. Many banks struggle because their data and systems are still fragmented. Real personalisation has to be built into the banking platform, not just added at the digital front end.”
Where bank budgets are going
Banks feel the pressure. In Celent’s Dimensions survey, 56 per cent of retail banks say it has become harder to win and retain customers over the past year, rising to 62 per cent in the United States. Their spending only partly answers what customers are asking for. Digital channels dominate, both as the largest investment area and the fastest growing, with fraud mitigation behind. Payments spending is rising at more than 70 per cent of banks, but fewer than 20 per cent place payments among their top three investment areas.
Personalisation fares worse. Only 4 per cent of banks rank personalisation of the customer experience as their top technology priority and fewer than one in four rank it at all, a position that has slipped since 2025 as AI investment has crowded it out. Around a quarter of banks, 26 per cent, say product or customer experience enhancements are not a priority at all, a response Celent describes as surprising given where customer dissatisfaction lies.
On the customer side, half of consumers rate their bank’s personalisation as no better than moderate. More than half want benefits that reflect the size or length of their relationship, and 51 per cent say their bank should anticipate their needs when they open the app or call. The regional detail is not always what might be expected. In the Middle East and Africa, digital-only banks score worst on personalisation, with 41 per cent of their customers rating it very or extremely good, while 90 per cent of customers of large national banks say their bank personalises at least moderately well.
“Payments are often seen as back-office infrastructure, but for customers they are one of the most visible parts of banking,” Moroney says. “People may only apply for a loan every few years, but they make payments every day. If a payment is slow, fails, or feels insecure, trust is affected immediately. Banks should start with the basics: speed, reliability, fraud protection and fast resolution when something goes wrong.”
Asked what he would say to a board that is deferring work on personalisation, Moroney says: “Personalisation is not simply a nice-to-have. It is becoming central to loyalty and growth. Customers want relevant products, timely guidance and recognition of the wider relationship they have with their bank. AI can help, but only if the foundations are in place. You cannot deliver truly personalised, AI-enabled banking at scale on legacy infrastructure. Banks that defer core modernisation risk falling further behind customer expectations.”
AI that explains, not AI that acts
More than half of the bankers in the Dimensions survey expect generative AI to have more impact on their business over the next five years than any other technology. Their deployment plans are concentrated in the middle office, with fraud and compliance risk and operational areas such as onboarding cited by more than a third of banks.
Consumers are open to AI, within limits. Well over two-thirds already use, or say they would definitely use, AI-driven alerts about savings opportunities, timely messages about relevant products and personalised financial advice. Some 68 per cent would use a conversational interface for open-ended questions, with 10 per cent against and 22 per cent unsure, and the appetite holds across age groups. Enthusiasm falls away once AI starts moving money. Fewer than half would definitely use features that manage purchases or pay bills on their behalf. Celent’s guidance to banks is to design for “tell me”, not “do it for me”.
The concerns are practical ones. Privacy and data security leads at 47 per cent, followed by errors, inaccuracies or decisions that cannot be explained at 36 per cent, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities at 29 per cent. European consumers are the most wary, at 49 per cent and 40 per cent on the first two measures, with privacy concern highest in Switzerland at 58 per cent, Germany at 57 per cent and the Czech Republic at 56 per cent. Bank leaders interviewed for the report said a person must stay in the loop for customer-facing AI to keep trust, and Celent builds its closing framework on the same idea: intelligence, always-on banking and human assistance, which together add up to trust.
Moroney draws the same line. “The line is between ‘tell me’ and ‘do it for me’,” he says. “Customers are open to AI that explains, guides and recommends, but more cautious where it moves money or makes decisions on their behalf. In practice, keeping a human in the loop means building in escalation for the moments where trust matters most, such as advice, lending, fraud, and complex cases that need human judgement. AI in banking also needs to be explainable, auditable and clearly bounded, so it supports the relationship rather than replacing it.”
The legacy constraint
The report’s second prescription concerns what sits beneath the app. Almost half of banks, 46 per cent, name the limitations of their current technology and legacy platforms as a barrier to improving products and customer experience, which Celent identifies as the most cited obstacle globally. Mandatory regulatory changes are cited at a similar level, 48 per cent, with overall IT budget constraints and a shortage of developer capacity completing the top four. The developer shortage is consistent across regions, reported by between 36 per cent and 38 per cent of banks. Among large banks, 27 per cent say current systems are also holding back generative AI.
Plans are in motion. Some 46 per cent of banks intend major changes to, or full replacement of, their core banking system in 2027, and 44 per cent plan the same for non-card payments platforms. In Latin America, 54 per cent of banks expect to move core banking to software-as-a-service or public cloud. The effort is uneven, however. Modernising platforms is a top-two priority for banks in Europe and Latin America but falls outside the top three in Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa.
Celent’s warning is that visible improvements to digital channels will outrun the platforms underneath them, leaving banks unable to sustain the personalisation and product flexibility that customers say would make them switch. It does not prescribe wholesale replacement. Progressive modernisation through APIs, component replacement, cloud migration and data work is presented as a legitimate route, provided it does not add another layer of temporary workarounds. Temenos, which supplies core banking and payments software, has a commercial interest in that conclusion. The survey data behind it is Celent’s.
“Modernisation does not have to mean replacing everything at once,” Moroney says. “For many banks, the practical route is progressive modernisation: start where legacy technology is holding back a clear business or customer outcome, then move step by step. That could be payments, product launches, data access or personalisation. The key is to avoid another layer of short-term fixes and move toward a more flexible, composable platform for continuous change.”
The Banking Expectation Gap: Global Consumer Edition is written by Celent principal analysts Michael Bernard and Alenka Grealish, and a companion US Consumer Edition covers that market separately. Temenos is exhibiting at Sibos 2026, which runs at the Miami Beach Convention Center from 28 September to 1 October, and can be found on stand H074. Kaue Tozzi, of the company’s product management team, and payments director Mick Fennell present a session on agentic commerce and programmable money on Exhibitor Stage 2 at 13:45 on 28 September.
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