A fundamental divide is emerging in banking—one not based on charter type, asset size, or geographic footprint. Instead, it’s based on digital maturity. Today, where a financial institution lands on that maturity curve is directly correlated with growth potential, competitive differentiation, and relevance.
Banks and credit unions that treat digital as a channel will stay stagnant. Those that treat it as a core competency, embedded in talent strategy, data technology, security, the employee experience and account holder engagement—these are the ones transforming their future.
New research from Alkami – Retail Digital Sales & Service Maturity Model, 2025 Update – in collaboration with Jim Marous from the Digital Banking Report, underscores the spectrum of the most mature cohorts from the least mature. The top tier of digital maturity, Data-First, is outperforming its peers with reported average annual revenue growth up to five times higher than institutions in the least mature categories.
This isn’t a slight edge. It’s a digital chasm.
While the digital maturity curve has shifted modestly year-over-year—with Digital-Forward institutions growing from 38% to 44%, and Data-First institutions increasing from 9% to 13%—this surface-level movement masks a deeper stratification.
The institutions that are ahead are no longer focused on digitizing processes—they’re focused on integrating artificial intelligence (AI), instilling fraud prevention actions, creating seamless employee and account holder experiences, and operationalizing data to influence behavior for more informed, data-driven decisions.
For bank and credit union leaders, digital maturity has become a strategic mindset where organizational structure, technology and culture are the accelerators of transformation.
These institutions tend to delay digital investment focusing instead on the physical branch and the in-person experience. While many have launched basic online and mobile banking capabilities, their systems are often disjointed, data locked in silos, and resist change when it comes to making investments in digital. Their strength lies in the personal, in-branch service they deliver to their account holders.
Notable opportunities:
As fraud threats grow more sophisticated and consumers expect digital convenience as table stakes, this cohort has an opportunity to change their “wait and see” mindset on embracing new technology (74%) and commit to fully invest in digital.
Actionable recommendation:
Start small, but act. Invest in fundamental infrastructure upgrades. Re-evaluate current investments in branch operations and marketing that can be shifted towards platform improvements to benefit both account holders and employees. Look at what peers in the Innovation-Ready tier are doing—you don’t need to leap ahead, but you can’t afford to stay behind.
This group has begun experimenting with digital tools and sees the value in innovation. They have decent security posture and fraud protection, but have a sizable opportunity to create greater operational efficiencies by delivering employees an intuitive user experience and automating traditionally manual processes.
Key challenges:
While Innovation-Ready institutions are more digitally fluent than their Patiently Exploring counterparts, they have an opportunity to grow by bringing together more tools through integration.
Where to go from here:
Narrow your focus. Select two to three strategic use cases (for example: digital account opening, marketing automation, back-office automation) and build cohesive journeys. Consider creating a cross-functional digital transformation team empowered to break through internal roadblocks to improve the employee user experience. Digital success here isn’t about trying everything—it’s about delivering a few strategies exceptionally well.
This group represents one of the cohorts that are the high performers of today—mature, secure, and in many ways setting the standard for digital banking experiences. They have deployed meaningful tools and processes to support both employee productivity and account holder engagement.
Differentiators:
Digital-Forward institutions have moved past the basics and are focused on optimization. Their cybersecurity infrastructure is best-in-class (for example:92% of account holders receive one-time passcodes (OTP) authentication, and 81% of employees do as well). But they can still stumble in two areas: bringing in advanced technology to capitalize on data activation and utilization, and exploring or piloting around AI with only 19% having implemented a generative AI approach and 52% having nothing formal in place.
What’s next?
Digital-Forward institutions are poised to become Data-First, but only if they commit to activating their data. Investing in real-time data analytics, personalized engagement, and AI-driven marketing automation will be key. Additionally, broadening employee upskilling programs to support data fluency will help unlock latent capabilities.
Data-First institutions aren’t just playing the game. They’re shaping it. With 42% already deploying generative AI and 67% using predictive automation to drive marketing, these institutions treat data as a strategic asset.
Their key competitive edges:
However, perfection is elusive. While it may seem surprising to some, Data-First institutions lag behind Digital-Forward ones in critical fraud prevention measures. For instance, only 64% monitor destination accounts (vs. 71% for Digital-Forward), and just 21% use AI anomaly detection, compared to 41% for Digital-Forward institutions. However, this cohort uniquely emphasizes consumer incentives for fraud prevention actions at 40% vs. 0-2% for other segments.
What to optimize:
For Data-First financial institutions, the most important action for this cohort is to keep the foot on the gas. With the foundational capabilities in place, the focus should be on delivering predictive and proactive experiences that are secure. Consider integrating fraud prevention and security more fully into the digital stack, standardizing governance around data ethics and AI deployment, and ensure that rapid innovation doesn’t lead to internal complexity or uneven experiences that impact your account holders or employees.
Digital maturity isn’t about benchmarking for vanity. It’s about growth, retention, security, and operational sustainability for both account holders and employees alike. The path forward depends on where your institution is today—but here’s what applies across the board:
✅ Take the maturity assessment: Know your baseline. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
✅ Invest in internal alignment: Cross-departmental collaboration is no longer optional.
✅ Turn data into action: Data needs to be clean, organized and actionable so that employees can use the insight to drive outcomes.
✅ Level-up the employee experience: Tools should empower.
✅ Prioritize fraud and security integration: Not just tech, but training, behavior, and policy.
✅ Explore the use of generative AI as part of your business strategy: See where pilot programs unlock new efficiencies.
The future leaders in banking will not be decided by who has the biggest branch network or the most accounts. It will be decided by who can act intelligently and decisively in digital environments.
The most digitally mature institutions aren’t just winning—they’re widening the gap.
