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Well said Michael...

Probably the core of the issue is that most of them do not have a channel strategy as such. Worst most still see mobile and tablet banking as an extension of OLB. Recently read a report where a bank reported that it saw a 30% drop in its OLB usage once it launched mobile banking. And they seemed to be happy about the cannibalisation!!!

IMO the simple principle should be mobile banking for personal transactions - balance inquiries, transfers and NFC payments, RDC - and may be geo-locator features whereas tablet banking should be that plus PFM, social n/w integration and additional online engagement tools such as video chat. Also I have hardly seen any banks showing investment portfolios and basic buy & sellover their tablet apps - is it so difficult?

While banks still think mobile banking as novetly, it has probably reached a stage where it can only be used as a catalyst to migrate transactional banking to a cheaper channel and not retail and/or engage customers as such.

The best I have seen so far is Citi (check their iPad app but not sure if available for UK) which has done this brilliantly well. Most others have just done a redump of the same ingredients into a different cauldron. 

Brett, My observation is that a bulk of those big budgets go into enabling a technology layer (such as a middleware), re-engineering backend systems etc...in the name of creating a conducive environment for seamless non-siloed channel banking but very little goes into the eventual channel delivery itself. Issues like customer experience, channel specific rendering, features and functions though identified as important often take the backseat. The result is often dismal adoption, dismal transaction migration into digital channels and hence dismal ROI. Interesting take on account opening. A mature market like Germany still requires a post office stamped post-ident as KYC making a straight through impossible. Guess regulators have a big role to play in effecting cost reduction for banks and it may not the problem of banks alone.

Guess a lot of the convenience issue will be resolved by wallets which are not just available on smartphones but also over the web. Mastercard and Visa entering into staretegic partnerships with Google. Monitise etc...are clear developments in this area.

E-commerce portals have a big role to play in their success. If they move ahead with embedding wallets into their portals as payment options, I guess we have a different dimension to payment altogether.

If I could use an e-wallet which has multiple credit cards, prepaid cards and debit cards, right at the point of purchase on the e-commerce portal, I guess it solves the convenience issue for ever.

Completely agree Brett. I guess the heavily invested upon business process orientation is now getting onto simply managing metrics on the bank's side and not really ensuring customer satisfaction and intimacy.

I guess there is a serious amount of false interpretation out there that strong compliance to service SLAs translates to customer intimacy. And hence the over reliance on recasting SLA driven business processes.

I guess it is also because, the focus on process orientation is yet to come to the front office sales and distribution side and is still stuck at the mid office primarily on fulfilment, risk management etc...I guess some mature BI and decisioning tools should become a part of the distribution process rather than passing documents from one desk to the other.

I think as Brett has mentioned in Bank2.0, e-channels are not yet a part of the core delivery strategy of the bank. They are still recognised as 'alternate' channels - that is reflected in the stake most e-channel managers have in the organisation hierarchy.

I hope we soon get to see common social media management platforms through which I can not only access but also integrate Facebook, Twitter, Twitpay, Square and Paypal (as of 3 CET today) and use the right kind of collaboration tools such as Google Wave in our daily lives.

Hope to see more of MoBanks coming up.

It is key for banks to understand that social media is not all about marketing, ads and fan following anymore. There is some REAL business happening there.

Indeed Liz. I for one have been on Twitter for a long time but never managed to put it to effective use until I joined the Social media for banks discussion and threw a few questions around to the panel.

I guess the way Twitter was used is in itself a proof in point for banks to learn the urgency of introducing better collaboration tools in our daily banking lives unless they want to sit back and watch these innovative intermediaries disintermediate them.

If you cant fight back, work with them.

The adoption rate in mobile banking is poor probably because of the auto-pilot mode that most retail banking transactions have gone into. And unfortunately, adoption rates are visible only when they come into the retail banking space.

If one takes a look at the most common activities that you might do on your current account or savings account, they are heavily automated for periodic triggers

1. Transfers - I setup standing instructions today

2. Liquidity  - I  setup sweeps today for better interest

3. Payments - I setup direct debits today.

Needless to say, the only specific instances when I need to do an out of turn transfer, I can get behind a PC

Rate of adoption of m-banking can improve significantly only if we enable

1. Investments over mobile devices

2. Business banking over mobile devices.

Investments does not mean just trading, but it needs to be supplemented well by appropriate financial tools for me to at the bare minimum track and maintain my portfolio and the returns on it. Hopefully we can expect some great apps on the markets soon which will make this a reality.

Business banking - Enabling the corporate treasurer to better track his liquidity, timely alerts and enabling him to take simple (we are not talking about complex cash management stuff here) but effective actions such as transfers based on these alerts are a must for this to be successful in business banking.

I guess run of the mill retail banking is a wrong place to start with to increase the rate of adoption of m-banking - that is if you keep aside micro-payments which is a different segment altogether.

Thats right Mike. SCV is ever so critical in any line of business from both perspectives - banks as well as customers.

I do believe that some of the best private wealth management solutions in the market provide good SCV capabilities - great dashboards both for the customer portal side as well as the relationship manager side. And most of them support trading across multiple asset classes as well.

On a standalone basis, retail banks have started managing SCV and solutions are slowly gearing up for that. And so is the case with investment banks as well.

I believe the true challenge is in integrating SCV across the two lines of business-retail banking and investments-and at the same time offer trading or transactions across products from both the areas from a single portal. This is in the context of bundling of banking and investment products which is fast gaining popularity across various geographies especially Europe.

What do you think?