BNP Paribas is to invest EUR3 billion in a three-year business plan to build the 'bank of the future'.
The French bank is looking to generate EUR3.4 billion in savings between 2017 and 2019, slashing branches and raising its spend on digital initiatives by 50% over the period.
BNP Paribas says it will rely on the success of a significant number of initiatives already underway in terms of products, apps and digital platforms such as Hello bank! and Wa! in domestic markets, Cepteteb and BGZ Optima in IFS, Centric and Cortex in CIB, and through its tech labs and incubator programmes.
The bank cites the achievements of Hello bank!, the mobile only subsidiary launched in 2013, which now provides services to 2.5 million customers in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Austria.
Chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafé told the Financial Times that some of the €3 billion investment would be invested in retraining staff and hiring people with different skills, such as data analysis, and he sees no reason why the trend for net branch closures will not continue.
"We are in an environment where we don’t create jobs — we are managing the transition," he told the paper. “The jobs are changing in retail banking and in investment banking . . . There is a big task for us to work with people to manage this.”