Succeeding in the digital arena requires not only providing products and services geared towards these three advantages, but also communicating these advantages to consumers. To do this right, financial institutions need to understand the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of the diverse consumer segments underpinning online adoption in the first place.

In late 2019, we spoke with our membership to understand their most pressing questions about complex digital services in the financial services space. Based on these discussions and our own institutional knowledge, in January 2020 we conducted a nationally representative survey with 2,176 respondents. We over-sampled for household incomes over $50,000/year, to analyze with precision the preferences of relatively affluent consumers. We also over-sampled for Hispanic consumers, across acculturation levels.

What we see from the market is that consumers grapple with three significant barriers when they approach financial services online: data security, institutional trust, and financial literacy. By digging deeper into how these challenges affect consumers across generational and multicultural segments, we identified five actions brands can take to help consumers overcome these challenges.