For every account opened online, 3.36 are abandoned.
Asking customers to retype information adds work. Government digital identity can reduce that work when it supplies the details and verification evidence your firm needs.
By Matthew Lee
For every current account opened online, 3.36 applications are abandoned. That is the 2026 figure from Alkami and Cornerstone's digital banking benchmark, and it has barely moved in years.
In a widely cited consumer survey, 68% said they had given up on a bank application because it was too long or too complex.
The trade-off every onboarding team knows
Shortening a form can reduce the work a customer has to do, but the bank still needs enough information to identify them and assess the relationship. The useful question is which details the customer must enter and which can be obtained from a reliable source with their consent.
Where we first saw it
We met this trade-off from the consumer side. Fill Easy started in 2021 as an app that filled in forms for people moving flats. We watched where people gave up: retyping an ID number, photographing a card, waiting for a review.
For banks, removing a field is only useful if the process still obtains the information required for customer due diligence. That is why changing the source of the information can matter more than simply shortening the form.
Replace repeated entry with verified information
With a supported government digital identity service, the customer authorises the release of identity information. The bank can use the returned attributes to populate the relevant fields and support verification, then ask for the business, funding or other information that the identity service does not supply.
- Less repeated entry: supported identity attributes can populate the form, so the customer does not need to type them again.
- A clearer source: the bank receives information through the identity service and can retain the verification result in the customer file.
The result depends on how the journey is designed: which attributes the service returns, which customers can use it, and what happens when verification fails. Start with those questions when reviewing your onboarding process, then measure completion rates and exceptions after the change.