๐ 1 November 2026 โข Signicat / Financial IT
The Battle to Onboard 2026, a report from digital identity provider Signicat released on 27 October, is drawing a fresh wave of industry coverage this week, and its numbers describe a gap between financial providers and their customers on agentic AI. 79% of European financial organizations say they are ready to accept applications initiated by AI agents. The report frames agentic onboarding โ applications initiated and carried by an AI agent on a user's behalf โ as the next stage of a funnel providers have spent years optimizing.
Consumers are at a different point. Only 14% are comfortable with an AI opening a financial product on their behalf. 65% want AI confined to a copilot role, assisting with the process while the person stays in control, and 11% are ready to hand the entire application to an agent. The majority position sits between enthusiasm and refusal: assisted, not automated.
Underneath the agentic debate the report tracks a persistent conversion problem. 60% of consumers abandoned an online application for a financial product in the past year, down from 68% in 2022. Four years on, most digital funnels still lose more applicants than they convert, which is part of why providers are looking at agents as a way to carry people through forms, checks and document uploads.
The data comes from a survey by Sapio Research conducted in August 2026 across 4,050 consumers and 450 provider representatives in nine European markets. The consumer and provider samples were surveyed separately, which is what allows the report to put the two sides of the gap side by side.
The two findings connect. An abandonment rate of 60% suggests much of the drop-off happens in the part of the process an AI copilot is best suited to assist with โ filling in forms, gathering documents, answering verification questions. That is also the part of onboarding an agent could carry end to end, and the spread between 65% preferring a copilot and 11% accepting full automation describes how much of that work providers can automate before customer acceptance runs out.
For onboarding teams the practical question is architectural rather than promotional. If agent-initiated applications arrive at the volume providers expect, identity verification, consent and authorization flows built for human users will need a path for agents acting on a user's behalf. The survey suggests most customers will still expect a visible human confirmation step, so early designs are likely to combine agent-handled form work with person-in-the-loop approval.
IMPACT: Who is affected โ onboarding, identity and compliance teams at banks and fintechs across Europe, plus vendors building verification flows. What changes โ with providers preparing to accept agent-initiated applications, verification, consent and authorization flows need an agent-compatible path, while consumer comfort at 14% signals that a human confirmation step stays necessary. What to watch โ how early agent-initiated flows handle identity and consent, whether copilot-style assistance preferred by 65% reduces the 60% drop-off rate, and what the next wave of coverage adds on provider readiness.
Sources: signicat.com, financialit.net
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