The Mobile Banking Imperative

Just about every aspect of our lives is now managed in the palm of our hands, and that includes our finances. No matter what kind of financial services you offer, your customers expect to be able to interact and transact through a mobile app. The by Citi found that 81% of consumers use mobile banking nine days a month on average, with 31% doing so 10 or more times a month. According to the study, mobile banking is one of top three most-used apps by Americans today. And it’s not just for convenience. The research also found that mobile bankers have higher satisfaction rates—they are more confident they know the exact balance of their account, have greater awareness of their financial situation, have fewer concerns about managing their finances, and have a better understanding of the services offered by their bank than non-mobile banking users. In fact, 82% of mobile banking users feel confident a bank can truly help improve their financial wellness, compared to 62% of non-mobile banking users.

Opportunities and Benefits of Mobile Banking

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the most commonly available mobile banking features—offered by anywhere from 70% to over 90% of US banks—are checking balances, transferring funds, viewing statements and/or transaction history, paying bills, locating ATMs/branches, and mobile deposits. But in addition to allowing customers to perform routine banking tasks on their smartphones, mobile banking also has the potential to deliver new capabilities. AI-powered mobile banking can provide personalized advice, tracking, and reminders to help customers improve their financial health. It also gives banks an opportunity to increase adoption of additional relevant products and services. Data about which mobile banking features customers are and aren’t using can provide valuable insights for product strategy and development. And, of course, mobile banking enables a high volume of transactions without human intervention, improving accuracy and reducing costs—all of which can boost profitability.

Technology Requirements of Mobile Banking

Developing a mobile banking experience that meets customers’ high expectations requires more than just thoughtful user-interface design; it also requires deliberate planning to provide the underlying infrastructure that supports the application and the customer experience. Whether you plan to develop custom mobile capabilities or use best-of-breed white label solutions, there are a number of critical infrastructure considerations you need to make, including:

• Bandwidth—You need to plan for the increased volume of transactions and the bandwidth requirements of your AI capabilities. And because customers are intolerant of outages, you need to build resiliency and redundancy into your strategy.
• Cloud—Mobile banking applications—and the massive volumes of data they use and create—need the flexibility, ease of management, storage, and security that the cloud delivers.
• Security and compliance—And, of course, security is paramount. Everything you do has to meet strict security standards as well as all applicable regulatory requirements.

BCM One Can Help Your IT Infrastructure Get Mobile-Banking-Ready

When you work with BCM One, you get a trusted partner who can help you plan, design, deploy, and manage a robust, secure infrastructure to support mobile banking. Contact us to learn more.