New research from digital agency YouGov has revealed that banks could hugely improve their customer’s opinions by launching mobile banking services. The study, commissioned by on-line financial services company Intelligent Enviroments, reveals that 25% of people aged between 18 and 34 would be more approving of their bank if they were offered mobile features.
What’s the story?
YouGov is an internet-based market research firm that maintains a panel of 250,000 respondents in the UK. For each survey, it creates a representative selection from the demographic their client is interested in. In this case, Intelligent Environments is interested in what it calls “Generation Y” – 18 to 34 year olds. What Intelligent Environments wanted to know was whether or not the presence of mobile banking services would improve Generation Y’s opinion of their bank. 25% of the respondents said it would.
What were the other findings?
- 61% said security concerns weren’t an issue
- Over 15% already want to use mobile banking, but don’t have the option
- 74% said that on-line and mobile were where they prefer to check balance information – only 14% prefer to check their balance at an ATM, with a meagre 5% preferring to do it in the branch.
- 36% rated checking their balance as the most appreciated “easy access” service, with 36% saying it was checking recent transactions.
What’s the story?
The results of this survey surprise me not in the slightest. I couldn’t tell you the last time I actually went into a bank. I do all my personal banking on-line – and if my bank offered a mobile option, I would use it. Unfortunately, they don’t. And what demographic do I fall in? Generation Y. As the more digitally savvy generations get older, they have more banking responsibilities. Loan repayments, bills, transfers, rent, etc. But we also want the convenience of being able to do it from where we do pretty much all the rest of our business – our computers. And, increasingly, our mobile phones.
As founder of Money Toolkit Limited, I have to agree
I can see that a large number of UK banks will fail to offer decent mobile access for a few years yet, and that is frustrating.
Mobile devices are becoming so much more sophisticated, offer a natural second factor authentication mechanism, and are forcing user interfaces to be much more simple and better designed.
Its a shame banking systems are such large beasts that they have too much momentum to easily change quickly to take advantage of the technology that is rapidly changing around them.
Dan.