State of Customer Engagement
in Banking — Asia Pacific 2025
Benchmarks from 40+ financial institutions across India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Southeast Asia on engagement maturity, channel performance and AI adoption.
Methodology and Scope
This report draws on structured interviews and quantitative surveys conducted with 40 financial institutions across six Asia Pacific markets between October 2024 and January 2025. Participating institutions include tier-1 and tier-2 retail banks, digital-only neobanks, credit card issuers and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs).
Survey questions covered five dimensions: engagement channel mix, personalisation maturity, AI/ML adoption stage, regulatory compliance posture and technology investment plans for 2025–2026. All data is aggregated and anonymised; no individual institution is identified in this report.
Benchmark Results Across Key Dimensions
Channel Engagement Rates
| Channel | Avg. Open/Click Rate | Top Quartile | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push Notification | 18.4% | 34.2% | +2.1pp |
| In-App Message | 28.7% | 48.5% | +5.4pp |
| 21.3% | 38.9% | -0.8pp | |
| WhatsApp / RCS | 54.6% | 72.1% | +11.2pp |
| SMS | 31.2% | 44.7% | -3.1pp |
Personalisation Maturity Model
We assessed personalisation maturity across four stages: Mass (undifferentiated), Segment (rule-based cohorts), Behavioural (event-triggered) and AI-Predicted (model-driven next best action). The distribution across the surveyed institutions:
| Maturity Stage | % of Institutions | Avg. Conversion Uplift vs. Mass |
|---|---|---|
| Mass | 18% | — |
| Segment | 44% | +38% |
| Behavioural | 28% | +112% |
| AI-Predicted | 10% | +287% |
Only 10% of surveyed institutions have reached AI-Predicted personalisation maturity — yet they report conversion uplifts nearly 3× higher than behavioural maturity peers. The gap represents the largest untapped opportunity in Asia Pacific retail banking engagement.
Regional Variation in Engagement Maturity
There are significant differences in engagement maturity across the six markets surveyed. Singapore and UAE lead in AI adoption, driven by a concentration of international banks and proactive regulatory frameworks. India shows the highest volume of digital interactions, fuelled by UPI and mobile-first banking, but personalisation maturity lags behind engagement frequency.
India
With over 900 million internet users and UPI processing billions of transactions monthly, India-based banks generate the highest event volumes of any market surveyed. The challenge is converting this data richness into personalised engagement — only 7% of surveyed Indian institutions have reached behavioural or AI-predicted maturity.
UAE & Saudi Arabia
Gulf Cooperation Council markets are moving rapidly. Regulatory pressure from SAMA and CBUAE to improve digital CX scores has accelerated investment in personalisation infrastructure. WhatsApp emerges as the dominant high-engagement channel — 61% of UAE banks cite it as their highest-converting digital channel.
Southeast Asia
Market fragmentation across Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam means engagement strategies must account for significant linguistic, cultural and regulatory diversity. SuperApp integrations (GoPay, GrabPay, Maya) are creating new touchpoints that leading banks are beginning to leverage for contextual offers.
Looking Ahead: 2025–2026 Investment Priorities
Survey respondents identified five top investment priorities for the next 18 months: real-time decisioning infrastructure (74%), WhatsApp and conversational AI (68%), unified customer data platform (61%), AI-driven next best offer (58%) and regulatory compliance automation (52%).
The convergence of these priorities points to a single architectural need: a platform that unifies event data, applies AI decisioning in real time, and delivers personalised actions across all channels within a compliant framework. Appice was purpose-built for this architecture.
Appice is a real-time decisioning system — not a campaign tool. It senses signals, decides the next best action, and executes in under 100ms. Most platforms analyse. Appice coordinates decisions and execution — inside compliance. Visit appice.ai or write to contact@appice.ai.