Digitalization of the financial sector and change management : Case company: Bank X’s digitalization and change management

This thesis was constructed to study the digitalization of the financial sector and change management in an anonymous case company, Bank X. The banking sector has undergone major changes in their operations and the digital transformation of daily banking operations has become a modern issue within the industry. The main objective of this Bachelor’s thesis is to understand, what is change and what are the key elements in successful change management and how does digitalization affect the banking and financial sector. Also, a survey was conducted to the Bank X employees to study how does the personnel in Bank X feel about the change management and digitalization of the banking industry. The theoretical part of this thesis focuses on the theory behind digitalization in the financial sector and the successful elements in change management. In the theoretical part, both literary and digital sources were used. Especially, in the theory of digitalization in the financial sector, most of the references are digital sources as the subject is relatively new and constantly developing. In the empirical part of this thesis, I conducted a survey to the Bank X employees in order to find out their feelings about the rapidly digitalizing financial sector and to measure if the change management was successful in Bank X. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used in the empirical part of this thesis. The main result that were found in the survey were that the general consensus of the respondents felt that the change management was successful at Bank X and personnel were generally satisfied with the changes and digitalization of the banking industry. However, a grave need of training in digital issues and improvements to communication between managers and the workforce was found. By analyzing the survey results and studying the theory of successful change management, few key areas of development were suggested to Bank X in order to improve the successfulness of their change management