Tag: smartphone banking

According to a new report, the large financial institutions are falling behind with the latest tech.

Despite the fact that mobile banking and payments are right at our doorstep and are being used at an increasing rate, in Canada, almost half of all banking execs don’t believe that they have the IT systems, infrastructure, and processes in place to be able to meet present – let alone future – customer needs and expectations over their smartphones.

The report was entitled “Banks: Customers Expect That You’re Always On and Available, Are You Ready?”

The report was made by CenturyLink and it pointed out that even some of the central services still require better IT. It pointed out that when it come to mobile banking and technology, about 40 percent of C-level financial execs who were surveyed didn’t feel that the IT infrastructure was in place for meeting the basic banking service needs to the level of customer expectations. CenturyLink’s managing director of financial services, Roji Oommen, said that “To stay competitive in a technology-driven marketplace, Canadian banks must be both financial institutions and mobile technology innovators.”

While mobile banking may not yet be keeping up with technology, it’s not that the resources aren’t out there.

The hope that CenturyLink certainly has from the insight in this report is that the banks will see that it and companies like it area already offering the types of services that will help those financial institutions to get themselves on the right path. These strategic technology partners do actually have the potential to spot the mobile tech solutions that are needed and to help in their integration – if not implement them on behalf of those Canadian banks.

The report also determined that 78 percent of banking execs in the country felt that customer demand for improved mobile banking and technology based services would cause them to be required to do more outsourcing. It stated that when those execs were asked about what parts of their IT are currently being outsourced, 86 percent said that they did so for IT infrastructure requirements, while another 72 percent said that they were outsourcing for their IT security.

Recent data released by the Halifax Bank of Scotland revealed that this preference is maintained in-branch.

The most recent indication that mobile banking is becoming increasingly popular and that the traditional form of banking by lining up and speaking to a human teller is on its way out, has now been released in the form of some interesting data from Halifax Bank of Scotland.

What it showed is that customers would rather use their smartphones or an ATM than speak to staff.

In fact, that preference is strong enough that customers would still rather use mobile banking or an automated machine, even when they’re in a bank branch. The vast majority of interactions that customers have with their banks are over devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and automated teller machines. In the branches, themselves, over half of the visits will include the use of one of the self service machines in order to pay using checks or cash. These are frequently chosen over the opportunity to speak with the human cashiers and other staff members.

Usually, mobile banking and other automated services are selected unless more detailed assistance is needed.

It appears that consumers would prefer to use devices whenever possible, and that staff members are consulted only when complex products (such as mortgages, for example) or detailed financial advice is required.

Online accounts are accessed by mobile devices and laptops far more frequently than branch visits are made. In fact, the data from Halifax showed that it had experienced 69 million interactions with consumers throughout the month of June, at a daily average of 2.3 million. This is an increase of 47 percent over the same month, the year before. This indicates that not only are people choosing to access their accounts online, but they’re accessing them more frequently than ever4 before.

Among those interactions, a massive 57.2 percent were made over the mobile banking app, as consumers increasingly use their smartphones and tablets for making payments and checking balances while they’re on the go. Another 29.4 percent used desktops and laptop computers to do the same thing. Only a tiny 10.3 percent of the interactions were actually branch visits and an even smaller 3 percent contacted their bank by phone.