Customer reception of digitalization of retail services by financial institutions during covid-19 pandemic: the case of Turkey and Emea Region

The usage of the Internet in our daily life, the unstoppable development of technology and competition have made it necessary for financial institutions to work more technology oriented. Because banks have turned to digital banking applications. By using digital tools, people can to most of the things automated and faster that they have done manually in the past and ubiquitous mobile technologies introduced more opportunities for digital life style. In the context of COVID-19 consumers’ spending and banking preferences are rapidly evolving and retail banks face an urgent imperative to reshape their existing digital and remote channels. Purpose of this research is to examine the customer reception, under the distress conditions of COVID-19 health crisis, of new digital and remote channels offered by retail banks in Turkey and EMEA region. A comparison between satisfaction levels of customers in different nations is also made. Results revealed no difference between satisfaction level of retail banking customers in different regions considering digital tools provided, but mixed results in fin-tech services usage highlighted a possible gap in digital transformation efforts of financial institutions.