Mobile banking users want proactive apps

Survey finds smartphone generation is ready to move beyond balance checking

Banking on mobile differentiation

Consumers who use mobile banking applications want financial institutions to provide more proactive services, according to a survey by mobile marketing firm Sponge.

Sponge surveyed 450 UK consumers via the mobile internet in August and found that 44 per cent of respondents already use their mobile - via internet, apps or text - to interact with their bank. More than one in four said they did so frequently.

The majority of respondents who do mobile banking use standard control features, such as checking their balance - around half (49 per cent) said balance-checking was the most useful function.

Just over a quarter (26 per cent) of mobile banking users found viewing mini-statements the most useful function, while 9 per cent found bill payment options best. A further 9 per cent felt the ability to transfer money between accounts most useful, and 6 per cent preferred an alert function when they were about to go overdrawn.

However, the research also shows an appetite for more proactive services.

Specific areas of interest included a text-based customer service facility (voted for by 48 per cent of respondents who currently use mobile banking), a mobile service that prompts customers to move funds around in order to maximise their rate of return (chosen by 17 per cent) and a location-based service offering consumers discounts or other rewards from retailers when they use their bank card (popular with 26 per cent).

“The basic mobile solutions …are perfectly valid and useful in their own right, but the smartphone generation has different expectations, and the bank that moves most aggressively to meet them has the chance to re-frame and personalise its relationship with its customers,” said Sponge chair Alex Meisl.

When asked whether other banks were more advanced than their own in terms of the services they offered via mobile, 70 per cent of mobile banking users either didn’t know or ranked them about the same.

“There seems to be a definite opportunity for more proactive services to drive positive brand differentiation between banks,” said Meisl.

Of those who don’t bank via their mobile phone (56 per cent of the total survey sample), two-thirds said they would be significantly more likely to if they owned a smartphone.

Safety and security is seen as the greatest barrier to mobile banking by 32 per cent of this group, but cost and privacy are much smaller concerns, identified by less than five and eight per cent respectively.