Here’s a riddle: Does more mobile banking make consumers like their financial institution?
The answer, alas, appears to be no. That according to a new survey released today by Fiserv, the financial technology company.
The study, which polled around 3,000 consumers, found that millennials lead in frequency of mobile banking use by a significant margin: over a 30-day period, millennials accessed their financial organization via mobile app or browser 8.5 times on average versus 3.1 times for non-millennials.
But those same millennials, however, reported lower satisfaction than their older counterparts both with their primary financial organization (69% vs. 79%, respectively) and their financial health (32% vs. 38%, respectively). By our read, that means the heaviest mobile banking app users did not like their financial institutions more than lighter users — and, remarkably, they did not even feel better about their finances.
Perhaps this is because mobile banking does not mean they have shed old banking completely. From the survey:
[W]hile just 6% of consumers cited checks as their most preferred method of payment, 58% of consumers said they cashed a check within the last three months. Faster access to funds was identified as a need, with 44% of consumers needing immediate access to funds from a check within the last year.
It would seem that even though most people — including millennials — don’t want to use checks, a vestige of legacy banking, they are somewhat forced to do so. And those checks, it seems, continue to create challenging financial predicaments, such as needing money fast, but not being able to get it.
And we wonder why banking consumers are not happy.