E-commerce has failed to reduce costs in line with forecasts originally made by financial services organisations. This is mainly because customers have failed to embrace the online experience, a new report has found.

The survey on the financial services industry, conducted by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, found expectations of cost savings from e-commerce initiatives have halved since last year.

Some 40 per cent of respondents in the Irish and British banking sectors cited the main reasons for this as "a failure to migrate clients" and that "customer usage was lower than expected".