Lloyds Banking Group is to step up partnerships with fintech firms as it seeks to deliver on a wide-ranging digital transformation project.
The UK bank has reported a cumulative technology spend of £4 billion over the past three years, with £2.8 billion of that budget allocated towards a three-year transformation plan set out in February 2018.
With the pandemic accelerating a shift towards online services, the bank's digitally-active customer base has increased to 17.4 million customers. Active mobile app users soared by nearly two million in 2020 to 12.5 million customers.
The proportion of products originated via digital channels also increased significantly in 2020, up 10 percentage points to 85%.
The bank says it has now "digitised" 78% of its cost base, over and above the 70% target set in 2018.
Presenting the results, outgoing cheif executive António Horta-Osório, comments: "Despite this significant progress, we are only just starting to see the transformation that technology is enabling. Customers will increasingly expect to interact with us in a more effective, agile and personalised way.
"To compete effectively against new entrants and respond to these evolving customer expectations, we need to continue to transform how we work, replace some of our legacy systems and enhance our use of data across the business. Some of this development will be internal but we will also increasingly use partnerships with specialist technology and fintech providers."