The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and
the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
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The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
1
Contents
Executive Summary 2
The Current Mobile Landscape 3
Keeping Mobile Apps Safe and Secure 6 The Current State of Financial Apps 8 The Next Generation of Mobile Banking 9
The Power of Analytics 14
Conclusion and Final Recommendations 14 Sources 15
Executive Summary
Most financial institutions are unclear whether the value of mobile is a defensive play, and if this channel can be relevant as a profit center instead of a cost center. In this report, we analyze the current mobile landscape as defined by the top research companies and outline how to leverage a new generation of mobile to meet consumers’ retail expectations while fulfilling financial institutions’ long-term goals.
One value often not thought of within the mobile channel is the ability to cultivate data and build a myriad of customer relationships, presenting the potential to positively impact the bottom line.
Research shows that an average consumer has relationships with at least three different institutions. This tells us that there is minimal brand loyalty in the financial world today and financial institutions should continually be asking: Why would any consumer want to conduct business with us? What separates us from the institution down the street? The stickiness of a financial institution to any one consumer, however, is predicated on the product offering and the ease of doing business 24/7/365. By offering a mobile solution that meets the demands of today’s consumers, the mobile channel is a continuation of building deeper customer relationships and produces loyalty by offering the tools aligned with our constantly connected mobile society.
Financial institutions that want to remain relevant, maintain customer loyalty, and become “top of app” must commit to a new generation of mobile solutions. Today’s consumers view mobile as a service, and the fragmented solutions of the past will not suffice for this demand.
In order to distinguish the solutions of the past from today’s advanced technologies, we refer to Mobile 1.0 versus Mobile 2.0 throughout the report. Mobile 1.0 includes features that were ported from the traditional “home banking” experience: Going downstairs to the family computer to check account balance, transfer money, and view transactions once a week. Many institutions have taken these home banking activities, and the desktop PC mentality, and have delivered the same experience to a smaller screen as Mobile 1.0. As you’ll discover by reading this report, today’s consumers demand much more.
Mobile 2.0 goes far beyond basic functionality by empowering consumers with real-time, on-the-go, actionable information. Mobile 2.0 enables financial institutions of all sizes with real-time customer intelligence to transform the mobile channel into a sales channel through targeted, hyper-focused marketing. By pulling a real-time query of everyone who has eight months left on their mortgage, a Mobile 2.0 solution will give you the ability to target these individuals with a customized, relevant marketing message. With the influx of available cash these individuals will soon have, your institution could market the idea of starting a long-term CD. With Mobile 2.0, this segmented marketing can be produce in real-time and tracked with analytics to give your institution the insight to turn relevant opportunities into revenue.
It’s time to think of mobile in a new way. Current solutions simply do not meet demands for customer satisfaction or institutional profit. Today’s financial institutions need a new set of tools that will allow them to easily analyze customer data and take action.
This report takes a deep dive into really understanding the current mobile landscape, learning how to keep financial apps safe and secure, identifying Mobile 2.0 features and why they are needed, and explains how the Mobile 2.0 approach will positively impact revenues for years to come.
“In this age of the customer, the
only sustainable competitive
advantage is knowledge of and
engagement with customers,”
Josh Bernoff,senior vice president, ideawww.ProfitStars.com
The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
3
The Current Mobile Landscape
In order to determine how to advance the mobile industry, we first need an accurate assessment of where we are. Smartphone growth is exploding and these advanced devices are changing the way consumers interact with their phones. According to Nielsen’s monthly survey of 25,000 mobile consumers (300,000 surveyed each year):
By most measures, it has been the “Year of the App,” driven mostly by the rise of Android and iOS users who have more than doubled in a year and account for 88 percent of those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days. In just one year, the average number of apps per smartphone has jumped 28 percent, from 32 apps to 41. Not only is the 2012 smartphone owner downloading more apps, they are increasingly spending more time using apps versus using the mobile Web – about 10 percent more than last year.1
As reported by Business Insider Intelligence in March 2012, the following chart shows how mobile device sales will continue to rise at incredible speeds. In fact, Cisco predicts that by the end of 2012 there could be more smartphones on the planet than humans, and by 2016 there could be 10 billion smartphones. We’re seeing a shift in smartphone purchasing because of their ability to empower consumers with constant connectivity of real-time information and the ability to untether from their desktop for any task: shopping, reading, investing, gaming, traveling, entertainment, sports, banking, and more.
“One in two mobile
subscribers has a
smartphone and that
figure is moving
steadily upwards.”
82% 80% 78% 76% 74% 72% 70% 68%
73%
81%
2011 2012
Time Spent on Apps vs. Mobile Web
Time Spent on Apps vs. Mobile Web
The rise of mobile is further highlighted by the fact that Apple sold more iPads and iPhones in 2011 than any single PC manufacturer sold in PCs worldwide.
3,000,000,000 2,500,000,000 2,000,000,000 1,500,000.000 1,000,000,000 500,000,000
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012E 2013E 2014E 2015E 2016E
Global Internet Device Sales
Units
18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0
Personal Computer Units Shipped (In Millions)
Millions
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The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
5 A deeper look at the current growth rate of apps shows the mobile landscape becoming more fragmented
every day. According to Mary Meeker of Business Insider Intelligence: Apple’s App store has now reached 25 billion downloads; tracking at 1 billion downloads each month, a figure nine times greater than McDonald’s burger sales.2
Looking to the future, Gartner has forecasted that the market for mobile apps will continue to accelerate as the number of downloaded apps is expected to increase to 185 billion by the end of 2014.3
When it comes to a preference in operating systems, Android OS and Apple iOS smartphones lead the way.4
Roughly 81 percent of all smartphone app downloaders use Android or Apple iOS devices.
Thinking beyond smartphones, Javelin Strategy & Research’s latest report – “2012 Tablet and Banking Report” – assesses the booming tablet banking market, as mobile banking by tablet owners is now growing at twice the rate of non-tablet owners (49 percent versus 22 percent). According to Javelin, this growth will continue as overall tablet adoption is forecasted to grow to 40 percent by 2016.5
With the rise of mobile devices, security remains an impediment to consumers’ adoption of certain mobile tools despite smartphones being ubiquitous and standard for many American consumers. The next section of this report outlines best practices for keeping financial apps safe and secure.
“Apps are now a $10 Billion
market and growing at 100%
per year.” March 2012
Keeping Financial Apps Safe and Secure
A top-of-mind concern with mobile is maintaining safe user environments. The seven best practices that follow should be considered with any app offering, and are always evolving. Attention to them is highly advised to assure the utmost in safety precautions:
1) Sensitive Data
Some financial apps on the market today use an individual’s bank account or card number to establish identity. This data is delivered over the Internet each time a new transaction and balance are received. There is no reason, however, for sending this data or worse, storing it on the device. Financial apps should always use a different “key” for identifying user accounts. As an example, use a product name, such as “Preferred Checking,” instead.
2) Device Signature
A native app is very intelligent about a phone’s identity. It knows the phone’s carrier, model number, mobile equipment identifier (MEID), international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI), and phone number. Unlike a cookie and IP address that can be spoofed with software, a mobile device stores most of this information on a SIM card, which is a read-only device. When a mobile banking app is installed and activated for the first time, additional steps should be taken to identify the authenticity of the user by leveraging out-of-wallet questions. A text message, email, or phone call should not be used to pass a token to the user for this initial setup. All Web services that allow a user to consume data should validate that the requesting device is from a known device list regardless of credentials.
3) Passcode Access
Many app users will turn off the passcode (or PIN) feature to an app if they have enabled the security password for their device. It is important to have your app check if the user has disabled the security settings on the device. If he or she has, the user should automatically be prompted to re-enable the device security passcode or be instructed to enable the app security feature. It is also important to re-validate a user when he or she is performing tasks such as funds transfers, remote deposit capture (RDC), bill pay, or peer-to-peer payments after the action has been submitted. The user experience will not be slowed, but only enable a confirmation for the action being fulfilled. If the app detects any malicious activity from the Web services, it should push an additional question to the user before the action can be completed.
4) Storing Text Data
Native applications can quickly show account balance and previous transactions. Data is refreshed when a user opens the app, and the previously stored data is usually stored in a split database. There are many developer tools available that allow the raw access to the underlying database, which can be used to query data, such as account number and the last four transactions, even if a password exists on the device. Having this data paired with a user’s name and phone number, which is associated with the device in the contacts, would allow a hacker to call the financial institution and request a password reset or to transfer funds. To prevent this from happening, apps should use the advanced encryption standard, or AES128, to encrypt the most-recent transactions that could be used to validate an external user. The seed, or shared secret, can be unique per device and retrieved from the server when the app is launched. The key is to never store data locally on the device.
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The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
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5) Data Service Access
All data should be requested over a secure socket layer (SSL) for encrypted communication, with the data SSL Certificate at 256-Bit Encryption strength. The native app client should use OAuth or the emerging OAuth 2.0 specification. OAuth allows the app to connect to the data services without having to store username and passwords on the device or send the credentials over the wire with each request. OAuth 2.0 is heavily implemented by social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MeetUp, but has not been widely used by financial service organizations to date.
6) Images
Images of checks contain a user’s confidential information such as routing number, account number, and billing address. Encrypting large images on a device is slow compared to text data. Images of checks that are stored for RDC should be sent to the server immediately after the photo is taken. If the app allows for review of the image, it should state that an image is available and allow the user to select it. Once selected, the image should download for presentation. The check image should never be stored or cached on the device for later retrieval.
7) Remote Wipe
With enough time, any system can be compromised through developer tools, stack overflows, or brute force attempts. However, all of these efforts take significant time. An interesting data point was revealed when Starbucks’ CIO, Stephen Gillett, was discussing the company’s phone-based payment system: At the quick speeds that consumers realize their device is missing, a defined workflow should exist that allows them to contact the institution. The institution should then be able to flag the device as compromised and the next time the app is launched, it should remove all sensitive data and brick the application. The app would then need to be reinstalled and re-configured to connect to the Web services and properly function again.
“It takes an average of 40
minutes to realize you’ve
lost your wallet,” he said.
“If you’ve lost your phone, it
takes an average of 5 minutes
to realize it.” July 20116
The Current State of Financial Apps
With close to 32 million wireless subscribers (14 percent of the total U.S. mobile audience) accessing their bank information via a mobile device in Q4 20117 (up 21 percent from Q4 2010), it’s imperative that financial institutions understand current mobile solutions and the implications they have on the direction the industry is going.
National Average Deposit Rates
Mobile Financial Services Usage
3 Month Avg. Ending June 2011 vs. December 2010 Total U.S. Mobile Subcribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
Mobile Financial Services Category Accessed in the Past Month
Unique Mobile Audience (000)
Dec-2010 June-2011 Percentage Change
Banking Info. 26,765 32,451 21%
Credit Card Info. 14,931 18,356 23%
Auto or Property Insurance Info. 6,041 7,169 19% Brokerage or Stock Info. 8,695 9,576 10%
The increase in SMS text, mobile browser, and app usage is a blessing to financial institutions looking to move expensive customer service channels to automated self-service. So far, however, mobile banking has focused on basic account servicing capabilities to address core customer needs like balance updates, transaction postings, and transfers.
According to Derek Martin, director of sales at Velti, a leading mobile marketing solutions provider:
Thinking beyond the cost savings a mobile channel will offer, a recent study conducted by Mercatus found that 50 percent of customers cited that mobile banking functionality played a role in the decision for their primary bank.8 If institutions cannot provide customers with the same abilities they receive when walking into a branch, and do so 24/7/365, they will find it difficult to retain customers and acquire new ones. Financial institutions that leverage the advanced benefits of mobile to significantly enhance customer utility and drive loyalty as part of the mobile experience will surely gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
“Financial companies have
extended most account
management functions to the
online and mobile space. This
makes sense when you think
of compelling and immediate
savings of migrating from
a cost-per-contact of $5-$8
for the phone and $15-$25
per branch visit to an online/
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The Next Generation of Mobile Banking
To grasp the importance of deploying a mobile solution beyond basic functionality, we look at several of the advanced features and technologies that will empower consumers with realtime, on-the-go, actionable data. In addition, we highlight how Mobile 2.0 turns the mobile channel into a sales channel.
Account Aggregation
Account aggregation gives consumers the ability to view all of their finances from multiple institutions in one central place, giving them a total snapshot of their financial picture.
Creditcards.com estimates that 80 percent of Americans hold a debit card and that the average cardholder has 3.5 credit cards in their wallet.9 Our own national proprietary research (focus groups held in three different U.S. metro cities) support these findings: on average, today’s consumers have relationships with three different financial institutions.
With companies like Mint.com providing a simple and effective interface, it is considered a leader in account aggregation with more than 7 million users.10 Ken Sun, from Mint.com’s parent company Intuit, revealed in a February interview after Mint released their native tablet app for Android, that 40 percent of Mint’s registrations are completed on mobile devices. Additionally, 30 percent of Mint’s user-base are “mobile-only” users (tablet and smartphone users combined).11 With so many people turning to third-party aggregation tools, it’s obvious that the ability to aggregate financial accounts is highly sought after by consumers.
If account aggregation is not included in an institution’s mobile offering, consumers will continue to turn to solutions like Mint.com and PageOnce; slipping further and further away from checking their accounts through their own institution’s app. From the consumers’ perspective, the choice is easy: receive all of their account information in one place or continue to log into three separate platforms with different credentials to calculate their entire financial picture.
Alerts
Alerts are SMS or client downloadable messages that provide short, clear information to customers, such as low account balances, fraudulent or suspicious transactions, and security notifications. Financial institutions can send these messages automatically (push) to customers or send them in response to a customer’s inquiry.
More customers are expecting alert notifications and view them as a standard feature of any financial app. By leveraging push notifications, they will stay informed even when an app is not launched. As we learned in our own national proprietary research, when customers received pushed notifications/alerts from their financial institution, they felt organized and in-the-know about their finances. These notifications also led to increased feelings of trust and brand loyalty to the institution providing the alerts.
When financial institutions deliver this information, it decreases the number of people who rely on getting it from an ATM or a branch. It also reduces wait and on-hold times at call centers. Using this simple method to deliver relevant financial information will certainly lower operational expenses and should be considered a must-have for a mobile solution.
Bill Discovery, Bill Reminders, and Bill Pay
Looking to the future, consumers’ bill pay behavior is very likely to change. The below chart shows the estimated percentage of change in bills paid by channel.12
Today, many institutions that offer bill reminders require that customers manually enter all of their bills to initiate the process. With the vast amount of customer-centric data any institution has, especially after deploying a solution with account aggregation, the app should be intelligent enough to automatically discover a customer’s bills. Mining transactions, discovering bills, and providing simple bill reminders should not be difficult tasks.
Financial institutions that make it easy to track bills and pay for bills and do so through an integrated user experience will surely beat out those that approach these features with multiple portals.
Transfers
Many consumers express a substantial need for the ability to transfer funds from account to account (A2A) or from person to person (P2P) within their mobile app. In our national proprietary research, we found this functionality to be highly sought after as well. However, as the research shows, funds transfers are not highly utilized in today’s mobile solutions. In a report conducted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, checking financial account balances was the most common task with 90 percent of mobile banking users having performed this
function in the past 12 months. Less prevalent activities were transferring money between accounts at 42 percent.13
“There’s an emerging segment
of consumers - which we call
Smartphonatics - that will
lead to an increase in the
use of the online and mobile
channels for paying bills,” says
Ron Shevlin, senior analyst
with Aite Group.” These
young and affluent consumers
are chomping at the bit to use
their smartphones, and are
very likely to change how they
pay bills if it becomes easier
to do so via mobile.”
Mobile Online Direct Debit Phone In-person Mail
337% 18%
4% 1% -5% -6%
Estimated Percentage Change in Bills Paid by Channel, 2010 to 2013
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The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
11 In this same research, consumers reported using mobile banking up to 60 times per month. As mobile solutions
become more sophisticated, this number will rise. In conclusion, it seems as though transferring funds is a feature that most consumers want, but will use only on a limited basis.
Search and Tags
Empowering consumers with all of their financial information in one place will only be useful if they can find what they are looking for easily. Remembering the name of a restaurant from a family vacation or trying to remember how much something costs are both viable situations for search functionality. By using powerful term-based lookup, customers or members should be able to instantly search through transactions by a memo, business type, amount, or location to find that information. Furthermore, the ability to add a tag to transactions should allow app users to organize their purchases by job, type, or other custom tags.
Any app will be viewed as a limiting resource if customers or members have all of their account information in one place, yet are not allowed to organize, view, and understand the data in whatever fashion works best for them.
Remote Deposit Capture
Many financial institutions have been slow to adopt one of the most promising mobile features: RDC. A recent study conducted by Mercatus found that 43 percent of responders who use mobile banking would switch banks for the ability to deposit a check by taking a picture of it.14
Checked an account balance or checked recent transactions Downloaded your bank’s mobile banking application Transferred money between two accounts Received a text message alert from your bank Made a bill payment using your bank’s website or application Located the closest in-network ATM for your bank Deposited a check to your account using your phone’s camera Refused to answer Managed your investments Other
Using your mobile phone, have you done any of the following in the past 12 months?
90% 48% 42% 33% 26% 21% 11% 3% 2% 1%
“Our survey results clearly
show that Mobile Deposit
helps drive customer
acquisition and ROI for
financial institutions,” said
Mercatus Managing Partner
Robert B. Hedge, Jr. “The
data we’ve gathered shows
that mobile banking - with
mobile check deposit as a
cornerstone capability - is
becoming a strategic growth
engine for banks.”
In addition to making life easier for customers, RDC can open the doors to new revenue streams and reduce other costs:
1. Eliminate Geographic Boundaries: Financial institutions that offer RDC can now accept deposits from customers outside their physical footprint.
2. Image Processing: The Federal Reserve charges less to clear items as images versus as paper or image replacement documents (IRD). Per the Fed’s pricing schedule, image-based clearing costs about five cents per item less than IRD-based clearing. For every 100,000 items an institution sends for clearing per day, the savings could be more than $1.2 million per year.
3. ATM Deposit Pickups: An ATM network with ATMs that accept deposits have very costly daily pickups for those deposits. Often, these costs are justified based upon the need for cash replenishment. RDC allows a reduction of the daily trips to the ATM.
4. International Clients: Many institutions, especially those with international clients who need to clear checks drawn on the U.S., pay for the transportation of those items to the institution’s processing facility and into the check clearing networks. These institutions spend tens of millions of dollars per year on couriers who pick up checks at the client location and bring them to the institution for processing and clearing. An RDC service to these clients could substantially reduce these costs.
Utilizing the Camera
Using a phone’s camera is a great way to enhance app functionality beyond the use of RDC. For instance, adding the ability for customers to take a photo of a receipt or check after a transaction to further improve the accuracy and timing of their digital ledger. The use case for this comes into play, for example, on a Saturday night when a customer uses the card for dinner, a movie, and gas. Typically, these transactions will not post until Monday when his or her institution pushes a batch run. The next day, on Sunday, when the customer is checking his or her account balance, it can become a guessing game to see how much was spent and what transactions have posted. Offering customers the ability to manually add transactions and attach an image in the process enables them to establish a clearer picture, at any given moment, of their finances.
Augment reality (AR) is another advanced mobile feature that utilizes a devices’ camera. AR draws off mobile phone GPS data to identify a user’s location. Contextual information specific to that location is then layered on top of a user’s screen in realtime. For some financial institutions, AR is showing users where ATM machines are located within a several mile radius. For customers or members, using a visual ATM locator is quite easy. They simply point their phone at the horizon and ATMs will be shown via a digital overlay from the live view of the camera on the phone. Below are screenshot examples of how an AR ATM feature is visually displayed to the user.15
Mobile Payments
A report by analyst firm Juniper Research forecasts that the number of mobile phone users making payment for digital goods will reach 2.5 billion worldwide by 2015; up from 1.8 billion forecasted for 2011.16 This represents a
growth of 40 percent and indicates consumers are willing and ready to use mobile payments.
Most recently, the media has covered a lot about near field communications (NFC). It’s important to note that only a few companies currently offer the ability to pay at the register with a wave of the phone. While more convenient than cash, NFC saves very little time from a traditional credit or debit card swipe. The case for NFC will change, however, but only as both merchants and financial institutions become more sophisticated in leveraging NFC to recognize and reward individual customers with location-based offers.
Expanding the scope beyond digital goods, 2011 represented $240 billion in mobile payment transactions and is expected to reach $670 billion by 2015.17 For now, however, mobile payments remain a largely scattered territory – carriers, credit card issuers, financial institutions, and tech startups are all trying to navigate the channels needed to deliver compelling mobile products to their customers.
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The Next Generation of Mobile Banking and the Return it Will Bring to Financial Institutions
13 Moving forward, financial institutions will need to offer an integrated user experience, provide proven risk
management and fraud protection, and leverage their brand trust to lead the way in mobile payments.
Native versus Web
Native applications are specifically designed to run on a device’s operating system and machine firmware. A Web app, or browser application, is one in which all or some parts of the software are downloaded from the Web each time it is run. Native applications are downloaded from the app store. Based on the growth of the app market, consumers have come to expect these device-specific applications. According to research, analytic platforms continue to show that native applications are used more frequently than their equivalent HTML5 counterparts, even on the same device.18 Furthermore, native apps can do more, and they can better take advantage of the touch and other native capabilities of smartphone and tablet devices.
A popular solution to provide services to as many customers and devices as possible is to offer three separate solutions – text, Web, and native. This approach allows customers to choose the platform or technology that works best for their mobile needs. However, maintaining an integrated solution across all areas and deciding which technologies to support can be difficult and costly. Furthermore, the user experience through a website is far more cumbersome than that of a native app. The time, appearance, ease of use, and overall user experience should play a huge role in the decision to go with a native solution versus a Web app.
Rather than going to a financial institution’s website, clicking on Internet Banking, and being directed to a different page to log in, a native app can be downloaded, enabling the user to log in with a secure four-digit passcode and allowing them to view everything needed on a platform specifically designed for the device being used.
Tablet
As previously mentioned, tablet growth will continue to rise as overall tablet adoption is forecasted to grow to 40 percent by 2016. While a majority of the top 25 banks have iPad and Android apps, less than 20 percent have native tablet apps specifically designed for the iPad, Android, or Kindle Fire versus ported over smartphone apps. One key takeaway from the Javelin Strategy & Research report – “2012 Tablet and Banking Report” – is that smartphone and tablet owners are attentive banking customers. They transact more, and they’re doing it through a cost-effective self-service channel. They are young (25-44), wealthy (incomes exceed $100,000 and have more investable assets), and use more bank products. This is promising for institutions seeking to deepen customer relationships, gather assets, trim operating costs, and build retention and acquisition based on differentiating themselves from rivals.
At the launch event for Apple’s new iPad, Apple revealed that they sold 15.4 million iPads in the previous quarter. As mentioned, that’s more than any PC maker’s total in PC sales during the same quarter. The iPad, iPhone, and iPod made up 76 percent of Apple’s revenue during that quarter, and Apple sold more than 172 million of these devices in total last year. By comparison, all PC-makers combined shipped 350 million PCs last year.
Consumers are looking to tablets as a way to replace the traditional desktop experience. With the added available real estate, a tablet experience should provide an enhanced user experience and deepen your customer/member relationship by furthering your understanding of how they use the tablet app versus how they experience your smartphone app. The point to remember is this: the mobile channel offers many different solutions and each platform should be considered with it’s own value proposition and what it can bring to your customers. Institutions that port their smartphone solution over to the tablet arena will discover that this is a quick fix and consumers will look to alternative, enhanced tablet experiences that provide the device-specific experience they expect.
The Power of Analytics
As outlined in “The Next Generation of Mobile Banking” section of this report, institutions that maximize Mobile 2.0 solutions will gain the ability to harvest, mine, and take action with vast amounts of segmented, customer-centric data. Having access to real-time app usage patterns such as frequency of use, average time of day, location, ATM statistics, and signature debit usage trends enable any institution to calculate a true ROI against its mobile channel.
Some mobile applications provide financial institutions with a dashboard to see their particular share of wallet with their customers. This real-time customer intelligence should open the opportunity to provide relevant offers across a wide spectrum of products. Targeted, relevant, and hyper-focused promotions have the potential to turn the mobile channel into a profit center.
Offering the most advanced mobile features on the market will amount to nothing if the ability to mine the data behind the scenes is obstructed by cumbersome administrative portals. When looking at a mobile solution, ensure the reporting tools and analytical insights are giving you the data sets needed to acquire, convert, and retain customers.
Conclusion and Final Recommendation
Mobile devices are revolutionizing the customer experience in banking, with non-bank organizations often leading the way. It’s time for this to change. Financial institutions need to regain the confidence and trust of their customers by deploying a Mobile 2.0 solution that meets and exceeds the demands of today’s mobile society. Deploying the right Mobile 2.0 solution goes beyond giving consumers everything they want in a financial app. The real power of deploying the right Mobile 2.0 solution is in the ability to give your institution the tools you need to easily and efficiently analyze millions of customer/member touch points that can be used for targeted, relevant marketing. Your mobile marketing will have the potential to reach the right consumer at the right time and in the right place. That is exactly how you turn your mobile channel into a profit stream.
If the mobile solution you’re considering does not include the functions discussed in this report, take great caution in moving forward. A legacy solution may be a quick fix, but it will not survive the abundance of available options that today’s consumers have available.
As previously stated, it’s time to think of mobile in a new way. It’s time to deploy a solution that consumers use on an hourly basis. It’s time to show that your institution “gets it”. It’s time to focus on the user experience and not the channel. It’s time for Mobile 2.0.
15
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© 2015 Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.®
Sources
1) Nielsen, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/state-of-the-appnation-%E2%80%93-a-year-of-change-and-growth-in-u-s-smartphones/
2) Rob Thurner, http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/app-marketing/app-download-statistics/, March 29, 2012
3) Garnter, http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1529214, January 2011 4) Nielsen, May 2012
5) http://www.marketwatch.com/story/javelin-identifies-bank-of-america-citi-and-usaa-as-top-tablet-banks-2012-04-18
6) http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/19/the-trillion-dollar-question-who-will-power-your-mobile-wallet/ 7) comScore, Mobile Banking App Usage in the U.S. Increases 45 Percent from Q4 2010,
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/10/Mobile_Banking_App_Usage_in_ the_U.S._Increases_45_Percent_from_Q4_2010
8) http://gamutnews.com/20110615/25008/mobile-check-deposit-cited-as-no-1-mobile-feature-for-motivating-consumers-to-switch-primary-banks-according-to-new-independent-research-study.html# 9) CreditCards.com,
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php#Card-ownership 10) Mint.com, https://www.mint.com/what-is-mint/
11) http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/mint-com-launches-android-tablet-app/
12) Aite Group, http://www.aitegroup.com/Reports/ReportDetail.aspx?recordItemID=715
13) Consumer and Mobile Financial Services, March 2012, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 14)
http://gamutnews.com/20110615/25008/mobile-check-deposit-cited-as-no-1-mobile-feature-for-motivating-consumers-to-switch-primary-banks-according-to-new-independent-research-study.html# 15) https://www.firsttechfed.com/eServices/mobile/index.aspx?src=esv2
16) Juniper Research, http://www.juniperresearch.com/viewpressrelease.php?pr=249
17) NetBanker, Mobile Banking & Payments by the Numbers, http://www.netbanker.com/2012/04/mobile_ banking_payments_by_the_numbers.html