Identifying and prioritizing the challenges of the transition from branch based banking to technology based banking

The transition from branch-based banking to technology-based banking improves performance, reduces costs, and makes banks more agile. But the opportunities created for banks are not without challenges. The current research seeks to identify and prioritize the challenges faced by banks in the transition from branch-based banking to technology-based banking. Due to its benefits for the banking sector, the current research has an applied orientation and its methodology is quantitative. In this research, two quantitative methods, fuzzy Delphi and Marcos, were used for data analysis. Research challenges were extracted through literature review and interviews with experts. In the following, these challenges were screened by distribution of expert questionnaire and fuzzy Delphi method. Finally, the priority level of the screened challenges was determined by distributing priority questionnaires and the Marcos method. The content coefficient of the research factors was acceptable, which means the validity of the research questionnaires. The theoretical community of the research was the managers and senior experts of Refah Bank and university professors, and the sampling method was done as a judgment based on the experts' expertise. The sample size in this study was equal to 15 people. At first, 26 challenges were extracted through literature review and interviews with experts. These challenges were screened by the fuzzy Delphi method and nine challenges had a fuzzy number higher than 0.7. Screened challenges were prioritized by Marcos method. The prioritization results showed that the challenges of cooperation with financial startups and FinTechs, the occurrence of unknown risks and problems during the implementation of new technologies, the decision-making style in the organization, and the regulation of new technologies were the highest priorities, respectively. Finally, the research proposals were developed based on the priority challenges with the focus group interview method. Some of these suggestions were: using RegTechs to identify and analyze the risk of cooperation with fintechs, using risk analysis and foresight committees to identify and predict future risks, strengthening the data-driven decision-making style by using technologies such as business intelligence and big data and paying attention to fair and comprehensive regulation considering the interests of all stakeholders involved.