Branches are important community anchors for banks, even as customers increase the use of digital services for completing everyday financial tasks. Without physical locations, institutions risk missing valuable opportunities to help consumers tackle challenging financial issues and navigate important life events—the moments that build trusted, lasting client relationships.
In the ProSight Banking Outlook: 2026 Trends survey, consumers said they prefer branches for more difficult banking issues, such as seeking advice on a complex problem, applying for a consumer loan, opening a deposit or investment account and closing an account. Industry sources pointed to the need for know‑how and personal touch as ongoing draws for branch visits.
“It’s not that [branches] are going away,” said one executive responsible for overseeing the branch network of a midwestern, mid‑tier bank. “What’s changing is what people are using them for.”
When customers with tough banking issues want to talk with a financial expert who “knows what they are doing,” they come to the branch. And when major life events happen, such as a divorce or a parent’s passing, “you need a person who can help you walk through those hard times. Trying to do any of that online can be difficult,” she said. And, she added, people always need safe deposit boxes.
Consumers thus want branches nearby. The majority of all age groups in the ProSight survey said they needed their primary financial institution to have branches close to their home or office. For older consumers, Gen X and Boomer+, the percentage of respondents who said so increased from the year‑earlier survey—to 67% from 58% for Gen X, and to 62% from 60% for Boomer+.
Digital drift
While customer preferences expressed in the survey’s findings supported the ongoing value of branches, they reinforced the industry’s shift toward digital banking. Surprisingly, though, customers might be starting to feel some mobile banking fatigue, the survey hints.
Banks are betting that there’s more work to do on digital experience and understanding its role in serving customers. Survey respondents said technology integration and platforms and customers’ online experience remain their top two investment priorities this year and next.
They also are learning that while solid mobile and online banking services are table stakes, digital applications have limitations and may not be as strong an influence in attracting customers as they once were perceived to be.
While more than half of banking respondents ranked their CX “average” or worse, consumers in 2025 said that too many technology changes were their top frustration with digital banking. Aside from Gen Z, they also said they were less likely this year to switch banks for better mobile banking apps/digital capabilities than they were last year, with Gen X showing the biggest decline, to 28% from 42%.
“On a top list of reasons customers will switch, is better mobile up there? No,” said Mark Riddle, director and research intelligence expert at ProSight Financial. “They’re going to switch for fees, rates and cash incentives.”
Respondents also said they may trim their use of mobile in the coming years. While still the top channel, mobile usage is expected to decline to 29% in 2028 from 32% in 2027.
Access to people, it turns out, is the top way to improve apps and digital capabilities, consumers said. Among respondents, 30% ranked 24/7 customer service as their number‑one upgrade wish, while 24% wanted the ability to text a live person, the second‑most desired feature enhancement. Artificial intelligence could potentially help with the former; humans are necessary for the latter.
Banks ranked the omnichannel experience as their third‑biggest gap between desired and actual customer experience, behind digital interaction and customer onboarding. Bank process, the data confirms, is making digital sign‑up hard for some—35% of respondents said there were too many questions to answer online to open an account, while 33% said a technical glitch cut off their digital onboarding.
The bank executive pointed out that the branch can be a vital way to optimize the connection between digital and branch banking. It’s common, she said, for customers who have trouble operating an app to come into the branch for help. Interestingly, she said, such an interaction can dissuade customers from visiting a branch for routine transactions but reinforce the idea that a branch is the place to go for special, more complex issues.
Mobile and online channels remain most convenient for simple tasks. A majority of consumer respondents said at the time of the survey that, in the past week, they had used digital banking for checking balances, paying bills and transferring money. Still, fewer had done so across every category of activity than they had in the previous year.
“When you think about how complex banking is, there’s so many things you’re trying to squeeze into a tiny screen. The more you throw in there, the harder it is to navigate and find things,” said John Rountree, head of client engagement at ProSight Financial.
To simplify the experience for customers, banks may need to consider improving the mobile experience to make it easier to complete everyday transactions that don’t normally require branch support.
Final thoughts
Branches and digital are essential channels for serving customers. The notion that branches would disappear as older generations aged out of the market died in the last decade, as banks came to appreciate these sites as physical foundations in the communities they serve and symbols of trust and commitment. Digital, meanwhile, encouraged everyday brand engagement and made finishing simple tasks, like money transfers, easy. Fine‑tuning the roles and experiences of each will be banks’ ongoing challenge.
“Banks that get the balance right will ultimately deliver a better experience, increase customer loyalty and build stronger relationships that drive both deposit growth and lifetime value,” Rountree said.
Michael Bender is Senior Editor and Frank Devlin is Senior Editor at ProSight.
