Mobile...everybody's doing it?

Mobile banking has been a ‘hot topic’ in the financial services industry for some time now, with much research pointing to growing customer demand and uptake of mobile services. In fact, I blogged late last year about some Forrester research showing that mobile banking provision in Europe is gathering pace, which one would assume reflects increasing demand...

But the term ‘mobile’ itself hides a multitude of sins. Not only can mobile banking refer to anything from an SMS alert to a financial management app, it is also often lumped together with related offerings such as mobile payments and mobile money services. So where is the demand for mobile coming from, and what exactly does it refer to?

We polled over 1,100 UK adults to see which services they would use to help manage their money. The results showed that on average 27 per cent of Brits would like to use their mobiles, including services such as smartphone apps and SMS alerts. Even more interesting was that the mobile channel was only slightly behind online banking (35%), and light years ahead of more traditional communication methods such as paper bank statements (6%).

However, demand varies for different mobile services. For example, instant access to accounts through an app or mobile web was particularly high (31%) for 18 to 24 year olds, whereas SMS balance and spending alerts are more uniformly favoured by a variety of age groups up to consumers in their 50s. Similarly, demand for online banking is relatively high across all age groups, with 25 to 34 years olds representing the highest demand (42%).

It’s fair to say that we can’t generalise when it comes to this channel, but mobile banking seems to be slowly and steadily creeping up to reach similar levels of popularity as online banking. As the early adopters and true evangelists of the mobile channel (the under 35s) become banks’ most profitable customers of tomorrow, the need for convenient and instant mobile access to account information seems to be a pretty safe bet.