U.S. Banks Lag in Mobile

The U.S. lags behind other countries in mobile banking, according to a new report from Adobe Digital. Based on 86 billion visits to banking sites between January 2015 and March 2016; 600+ million social impressions (from Facebook, G+, Reddit, Twitter, Google and others); and a survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers about their online financial planning, the report found that larger banks, with more than $100 billion in assets, had a significantly higher mobile share than smaller banks.

That echoes a point that Bill Sullivan, head of global financial services market intelligence at Capgemini Financial Services, made a few weeks ago. He said that conversations with bank CXOs showed a remarkable contrast between large banks, which saw the need to become digital, and some regionals and super-regionals that didn’t think fintech would impact them. Adobe found that smaller banks are failing to move to mobile and when they do, the experience is subpar.

U.S. consumers used their mobiles to visit their bank 27 times in 2015 while the number of mobile interactions was twice that in Canada, the UK and Australia.

“The retail banking landscape is fragmented in the United States,” said Matt Roberts, an analyst for ADI. “The top 10 largest banks in the United States only hold 59 percent of market share, and two of them aren’t even U.S. banks. That number is 80 percent in Australia, 90 percent in Canada, and 81 percent in the U.K. This fragmentation, and the fact that there are so many smaller, regional banks in the U.S., is inhibiting the growth and scalability of mobile banking.”

Mobile app quality is a significant motivational factor towards switching banks for Millennials and Gen X, Adobe found, although location of local branches carries the heaviest weight overall for the time being.

Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at ADI, said U.S. banks should look across the pond to see how banks there are experiencing the mobile shift.

About Tom Groenfeldt

I write - mostly about finance and technology, sometimes about art, occasionally about politics and the intersection of politics and economics. My work appears on Forbes.com and and occasionally in The American Banker and Banking Technology in London.
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.