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2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankingsby Peter Wannemacher and myriam da Costa, april 25, 2013

For: eBusiness & Channel strategy Professionals

key TakeaWays

Forrester evaluated The Mobile Banking services of 15 Banks WorldwideForrester evaluated the mobile banking off erings of 15 banks in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. Our evaluation criteria cover account information, transaction functionality, usability, and support for diff erent mobile platforms.

every Bank does some Things Well, But There’s plenty of Room For improvementAlthough Chase stood out for having the best mobile banking service overall, we found best-in-class examples from almost all of the fi rms we assessed. We also found important opportunities for improvement at every bank, as you would expect for a relatively new touchpoint.

Banks Need To Make More use of Mobile ContextTh e most obvious missed opportunity among the 15 banks we reviewed is that few are making eff ective use of context to make information more relevant to customers. Sales is another big missed opportunity: Some banks aren’t even trying to cross-sell products and services through mobile, and none of the 15 does it eff ectively.

© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

For eBusiness & Channel strategy ProFessionals

Why Read This RepoRT

We used our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology to evaluate the retail mobile banking offerings of 15 retail banks in in North America, Western Europe, and Australia across more than 50 criteria. This report, which forms part of our mobile banking strategy playbook, is intended to help eBusiness and channel strategy professionals to benchmark their own mobile banking offerings. You can use the data and practices in this report to understand the current state of mobile banking functionality, get a clear view of the mobile features the top banks offer to retail customers, and plan improvements to your own mobile banking services.

table of Contents

Forrester’s Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark Methodology

Ranking Banks’ Mobile efforts: Chase Leads With Robust Functionality

Mobile Banking Functionality Best practices of Banks Worldwide

reCommendations

Mobile Banking is Meeting expectations; Now Try To exceed Them

supplemental Material

notes & resources

Forrester used its mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology to review the mobile banking services offered by 15 banks worldwide: Bank of america, Barclays, Chase, Citibank, Commonwealth Bank of australia, hsBC, la Caixa, lloyds tsB, natWest, deutsche Postbank, rabobank, royal Bank of Canada, société générale, td Canada trust, and Wells Fargo.

related research documents

2013 us mobile Banking Functionality rankingsapril 25, 2013

2013 uK mobile Banking Functionality rankingsapril 25, 2013

Best Practices in mobile BankingJanuary 28, 2013

2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality RankingsBenchmarks: the mobile Banking strategy Playbookby Peter Wannemacher and myriam da Costawith Benjamin ensor, stephen Walker, and douglas roberge

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2013 global Mobile Banking Functionality rankings 2

© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 25, 2013

FoRResTeR’s MoBiLe BaNkiNG FuNCTioNaLiTy BeNChMaRk MeThodoLoGy

To help eBusiness and channel strategy professionals benchmark their mobile efforts, identify critical mobile features, and plan for the future, we used our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology to evaluate the mobile banking services of 15 large retail banks in eight countries: Bank of America, Barclays in the UK, Chase in the US, Citibank in the US, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC in the UK, la Caixa in Spain, Lloyds TSB in the UK, NatWest in the UK, Postbank in Germany, Rabobank in the Netherlands, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Société Générale in France, TD Canada Trust, and Wells Fargo in the US.1 This methodology has three steps:

■ Define a user scenario. We used Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® survey data to develop a user persona based on a profile of US and European mobile banking users (see Figure 1). To test the mobile functionality and usability, we identified four common banking goals that we attempted to execute on each bank’s main iPhone app.2 The goals reflect the range of activities that users have come to expect from mobile banking, including consolidated balance viewing, money movement, bill payment, and mobile alerts.3

■ Score the banks’ mobile banking services across a variety of categories and criteria. We use more than 50 individual criteria in our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark methodology. Each criterion has a potential score ranging from -2 to +2. These scores measure how well each feature meets users’ needs and helps users achieve their goals. The criteria are divided into eight categories: range of touchpoints, enrollment and login, account information, transactional functionality, service features, cross-channel guidance, sales and acquisition, and usability.4

■ Rank the firms. We weight each criterion to ensure that — in general — the most important mobile features have the largest impact on a firm’s overall score.5 The combination of weightings and scores for the criteria generates an overall score for each category and for the bank’s mobile offering as a whole. The final scores are based on a 100-point scale — a score of 50 or higher meets our minimum standards.




Figure 1 Mobile Banker User Description And Goals

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.75591

User goals

• Find and view a recent transaction• Send $20 to his niece for her birthday• Add a payee for mobile bill pay• Find the branch or ATM closest to him

User description

A 35-year-old married man with one daughter and a high-paying job as a salesman in thepharmaceutical industry travels regularly for work. He recently bought an iPhone and isquickly learning to use it to manage his �nancial accounts. He has been comfortableusing remote banking for years and is eager to shift many banking activities — includingpaying bills and moving money — to his smartphone.

RaNkiNG BaNks’ MoBiLe eFFoRTs: Chase Leads WiTh RoBusT FuNCTioNaLiTy

In this, our inaugural Global Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark ranking, the 15 banks achieved an average score of 56 out of 100 (see Figure 2). Individual category scores reveal the differences seen in the banks’ mobile banking offerings (see Figure 3). While most of the banks are meeting mobile banking users’ basic needs, there’s considerable room for improvement for some banks. Specifically, we found that:

■ Chase takes the top spot. With a score of 71 out of 100, Chase received the highest overall score among the 15 banks we evaluated. The firm scored an impressive 81 out of 100 in our range of touchpoints category, but the break from the pack came in the transactional functionality category, where Chase earned 86 out of 100. The bank offers useful contextual options for mobile banking users, such as the ability to add a payee for person-to-person (P2P) payments by importing the customer’s contacts from his or her phone. The bank also lets users either cancel or edit pending transactions like bill payments or transfers.

■ La Caixa is the leader in Europe. With a score of 67, la Caixa received the highest score among the eight European banks we assessed. The bank scored an impressive 88 out of 100 in our range-of-touchpoints category and 83 out of 100 in account information and money management. La Caixa has native mobile and tablet apps across four operating systems: Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, and Windows Phone. Customers can make transfers, pay bills, and apply for products via the bank’s tablet app. Customers can search their transaction histories to up to one year ago and search by transaction amount range.




■ The other North American banks mostly did well. Although they haven’t quite matched the achievements of Chase, the digital banking teams at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and RBC have also built impressive mobile banking services that offer their customers extensive functionality on a wide range of devices.

■ The UK’s banks still lag behind. Strikingly, the UK’s banks — which were slow to take mobile banking seriously and late to launch mobile banking services for smartphones — have not yet caught up from their late start.6 The mobile banking services from the UK’s banks are notably less advanced than those offered by banks in North America and elsewhere in Europe. The best of the UK’s banks, NatWest, scored slightly above the average for the 15 banks overall.




Figure 2 2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings


Below minimumstandards(25 to 49)

Signi�cantlybelow minimum

standards(0 to 24)

Meets/exceedsminimumstandards(50 to 74)

Signi�cantlyabove minimum

standards(75 to 100)

Scoring criteria scale:

*Please note that we reviewed the main mobile banking app for all banks. These banks also o�er other apps,notably mobile payment apps, that we did not include in this benchmark.

56Average

25HSBC

52Commonwealth Bankof Australia*

46TD Canada Trust

54Barclays*

52Lloyds TSB

56Société Générale

57NatWest

58Deutsche Postbank

59Rabobank*

61Citi (US)

61Royal Bank of Canada

63Wells Fargo

63Bank of America

67la Caixa*

71Chase




Figure 3 Average Category Scores Across The Mobile Bank App Benchmarked


Usability

Range of

touchpoints

Enrollm

ent

and login

Account info

and

money management

Transactio

nal

feature

s

Services

feature

s

Sales and

acquisition

Cross-

channel

Chase 86 58 73 86 55 73 0 75

la Caixa 88 31 83 59 48 65 26 85

Bank of America 83 58 74 56 58 58 8 70

Wells Fargo 75 40 73 73 49 61 0 70

Royal Bank ofCanada 64 75 68 65 34 73 11 85

Rabobank 75 91 75 69 26 23 0 80

Citi (US) 84 43 73 81 29 56 0 55

DeutschePostbank 78 40 69 50 26 64 14 95

NatWest 71 43 76 49 29 60 0 90

Société Générale 68 58 71 33 45 61 0 95

Lloyds TSB 53 83 60 51 34 60 26 55

Barclays 73 65 69 36 26 60 0 85

TD Canada Trust 53 25 60 53 11 69 0 60

CommonwealthBank of Australia 73 40 45 44 18 76 33 85

HSBC 49 56 34 0 18 4 0 45

Average 71 54 67 54 34 57 8 75

MoBiLe BaNkiNG FuNCTioNaLiTy BesT pRaCTiCes oF BaNks WoRLdWide

Our methodology not only provides a benchmark for the current state of mobile banking functionality; it also uncovers important practices from the banks we assessed. We found best-in-class examples from almost all of the firms we assessed. These range from enabling customers to manage alerts from within the mobile app to making it easy to send money to people in a customer’s mobile phone address book.




Leading Banks support a Wide Range of Mobile Touchpoints

Before banks can fully serve customers through mobile touchpoints, they have to ensure that customers can interact with them via mobile. Today banks have to develop mobile banking services for many different smartphone and tablet platforms. La Caixa, Chase, Bank of America, and Rabobank stand out in this category. We reviewed banks’ offerings across four mobile delivery methods:

■ Two-way SMS banking. Hard as it may be to believe, not everyone has a smartphone — yet. For non-smartphone users, SMS text banking offers the benefits of immediate access to their bank accounts without the barriers of other touchpoints. What’s more, buying a smartphone or tablet doesn’t quell the desire for SMS interactions: US online smartphone owners are actually more likely to send and receive SMS at least daily.7 Most of the banks offer some type of two-way SMS banking, but only La Caixa lets users initiate transfers or pay credit card bills by sending an SMS to the bank.8

■ Dedicated mobile website(s). With firms in other industries delivering useful mobile websites, customers will expect the same from their banks. Most banks have built mobile-optimized websites in order to meet this demand. Indeed, some banks initially intended their mobile websites, rather than mobile apps, to be their customers’ primary way of doing mobile banking. Some banks are using their mobile websites to promote services and offer product information: For example, TD Canada Trust shows current rates for various products on its mobile site (see Figure 4).

■ Downloadable apps for smartphones. Banks still prize the control and device-specific options that downloadable smartphone apps offer. We looked at whether banks support customers across four operating systems: Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, and Windows Phone. Only Bank of America, Chase, la Caixa, NatWest, and Rabobank have native apps for all four platforms, but all of the banks we looked at offer at least two or three smartphone apps.

■ Tablet banking apps. In the past couple of years, banks and customers alike have rapidly moved onto tablets: Some 14% of Western European online consumers owned a tablet in 2012, a substantial increase from 2011 when just 7% possessed a tablet.9 La Caixa and Postbank score full marks here, offering tablet apps for Android and the iPad. Chase offers an app for the Kindle Fire that lets users view info and pay bills. Bank of America’s Kindle Fire app includes the firm’s merchant-funded rewards feature. RBC’s new tablet banking app offers digital advice tools, including videos that play within the app itself (see Figure 5). Citibank, meanwhile, continues to refine the iPad app that first made a splash more than a year ago.10




Figure 4 TD Canada Trust Shows Current Rates For Products On Its Mobile Website


Source: TD Canada Trust mobile website




Figure 5 RBC’s New Tablet Banking App Offers Digital Advice — Including In-App Video


Source: Royal Bank Of Canada iPad app

Banks have Made significant improvements To enrollment and Login

Mobile app enrollment was once painful, with some banks requiring separate online and mobile login credentials and offering mobile experiences that were completely different from what customers were used to on the PC-based website. But the leading banks have substantially improved in this area. Rabobank, Lloyds TSB, and Royal Bank of Canada stand out in this category. These firms meet users’ expectations in this area by excelling at:

■ Enrollment. Citibank lets new users register on a mobile device without the need to use a traditional PC-based website. Wells Fargo makes it easy for customers to turn on or off mobile access to individual accounts.




■ Login options. Banks must meet expectations by making the mobile banking login process as painless as possible while ensuring privacy and security — no easy balance. Bank of America offers best-in-class options, including the ability to save credentials, store multiple users on a single app, and delete users easily. Barclays only requires a PIN code to log in.

■ Content before login. Leading banks are recognizing that customers don’t need to be logged in for every type of information. Rabobank was one of the first to do this, letting its customers see their balances without logging in through its “Saldochecker” (balance checker) feature.11 Société Générale lets mobile banking users check their balance without entering their login credentials (see Figure 6). RBC offers a range of content and features that customers can use without logging in, including an easy-to-use mobile currency converter and a mortgage calculator.

Figure 6 Société Générale Lets Customers See Their Balance Without Logging In


Source: Société Générale iPhone app




account information is usually extensive, But Money Management is Rare

Customers expect their core banking needs to be met on any remote touchpoint — from ATMs to tablets. The core needs of customers include accessing account balances and transaction histories. La Caixa is the overall leader in this category, but most of the other banks have also got the basics right and did well here, too. We evaluated the account information available via mobile banking, including:

■ Balances and transaction history. All of the banks we evaluated present account balances in a clean, easy-to-scan layout, and all of the banks offer a single-screen view of the user’s accounts. When it comes to transaction history, only Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, la Caixa, and NatWest offer transaction histories that go back up to 90 days and can be searched (see Figure 7). Bank of America stands out for being the only bank that lets users search their transaction history using keywords (see Figure 8). Limited transaction histories at Commonwealth Bank harmed the bank’s overall score.

■ Money management features. Two of the European banks are the leaders here, with Société Générale and Postbank offering extensive mobile money management features via their iPhone apps. Postbank lets customers flip their phone and see their budget over a year (see Figure 9). Société Générale’s customers can view their balance directly on the landing page thanks to a fuel gauge design that shows how they are doing on their budget. Both Postbank and Société Générale let their customers categorize their expenses automatically or manually (see Figure 10). Few of the other banks offer their customers any mobile money management features.




Figure 7 La Caixa Lets Users See A Year Of Transaction History And Search Their Transactions


Source: la Caixa iPhone app




Figure 8 Bank Of America Lets Customers Search Their Transaction History With Keywords


Source: Bank of America iPhone app




Figure 9 Postbank Lets Users Flip Their Phone To Visualize Their Budget


Source: Deutsche Postbank iPhone app




Figure 10 Société Générale Lets Customers Categorize Spending Automatically Or Manually



Transactional Content and Functionality are increasing

As mobile banking users grow more comfortable using their smartphones for banking transactions, they will do it more — and the importance of mobile transactional functionality will increase. This is the category where Chase really stands out from the pack, offering an exceptionally wide range of transactional functionality.12 Conversely, HSBC does not offer any transactions at all on its iPhone app, contributing to its dismal overall score. In all, we looked at 11 aspects of mobile money movement, including:

■ Account transfers. We looked at four aspects of a firm’s mobile account transfer functionality: type, timing, source, and ability to view. All of the banks we evaluated earned positive scores for their mobile transfer features, except HSBC. The US banks performed less well here, as US banks typically don’t let customers transfer money to accounts at other banks, while that functionality is standard in both online and mobile banking in other developed economies.




■ Bill payments. One of the most commonly cited use cases for mobile banking has been the urgent and immediate need to pay a bill on time through a mobile. However, bill payment patterns vary substantially from country to country, so this functionality is more important to customers in some countries and customer segments than others. Chase is the only bank to let users add a new payee directly from a mobile (see Figure 11). Commonwealth Bank of Australia makes it easy for customers to pay bills using only the BPay biller code and customer reference number.13 Rabobank and la Caixa both make it easy to make bill payments by taking a photograph of the bill.14

■ Person-to-person payments. Chase, Citibank, and NatWest earn a perfect score for their person-to-person (P2P) payment functionality. NatWest mobile banking users only need a recipient’s mobile phone number to initiate a payment. Helpfully, NatWest and Citibank both let users import payees and recipients from their contact list on their phone (see Figure 12). RBC and TD Canada Trust both offer mobile P2P through Canada’s Interac e-Transfer service.15 Several other banks, including Barclays, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Rabobank, offer person-to-person payments through separate mobile payment apps that we excluded from this benchmark.16 Though those mobile payment apps are not fully integrated to the banks’ main mobile banking app, the banks provide a direct link from their main mobile banking app to the mobile payment app in the iTunes store.

Figure 11 Chase Makes Adding A Payee Easy With Contextual Info And An Efficient Task Flow


Source: Chase iPhone app




Figure 12 NatWest Lets Users Import Payees From Their Mobile Contact List


Source: NatWest iPhone app

service Features are Limited, While alerts are More extensive

As mobile banking becomes the primary way that mobile banking users manage their money, they will expect to be able to initiate a growing range of customer-service tasks from within mobile banking. Few banks perform brilliantly here, though Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and la Caixa offer the most service features. We looked at:

■ Search. We believe that banks should make it easy for customers to search for information or transactions through their mobile banking apps. Clearly most digital banking teams don’t see this as a priority, as this was the only criterion that all 15 banks failed. None of the banks we reviewed offer any type of mobile search functionality beyond the ability to search within transaction history.

■ Help. As the complexity of mobile banking increases, digital banking teams will need to help customers understand how to use more complex functionality, ideally with context-sensitive help. Wells Fargo provides some of the most helpful information, offering contextual help where mobile banking users need it (see Figure 13).




■ Alerts. All of the banks we assessed offer some type of balance, transaction, or security alerts. Société Générale lets users set up threshold alerts within the app and select the type of alerts: push alerts or emails (see Figure 14).

Figure 13 Wells Fargo Provides Valuable Mobile Banking Information In Context


Source: Wells Fargo iPhone app




Figure 14 Société Générale Lets Users Set Threshold Alerts



Cross-Channel support is often Limited

Most mobile banking users still use other touchpoints, too. We looked at how well banks’ mobile apps help customers get human help, how well the apps help customers find branches and ATMs, and whether the apps are connected to banks’ social media presence. Most banks provide useful telephone contact information, and many have good branch and ATM finders. The cross-channel guidance we reviewed included:

■ Contact options. Banks should aim to make channel transitions as easy and convenient as possible for customers. All of the banks we assessed provide phone numbers on their iPhone apps, but none provide mobile chat or IM for mobile. Société Générale makes banking more personal by enabling direct contact with bank advisors through a message inbox in its mobile app.

■ ATM and branch locators. Three of the 15 banks we evaluated received perfect scores for their ATM and branch locator functionality, but they approach this capability in different ways. Chase offers a street view to users to make it easier to find ATMs and branches, while Wells Fargo’s




and RBC’s iPhone apps include best-in-class ATM and branch location features such as maps, directions, distances, phone numbers, location details, and branch phone numbers.

■ Integration with social media. We looked at how well banks incorporate links to social media like Twitter and Facebook. Banks like Postbank and la Caixa include links to their customer service teams on Twitter and to their Facebook accounts. La Caixa shows links to its YouTube channel and blog. Commonwealth Bank of Australia shows live tweets in real time on its mobile app and shows its latest Facebook feed and latest YouTube video (see Figure 15).

Figure 15 Commonwealth Bank Connects To Its Twitter, Facebook, And YouTube Accounts


Source: Commonwealth Bank of Australia iPhone app




Mobile Marketing and sales are almost Nonexistent

Today, mobile banking remains focused largely on serving existing customers. But as mobile banking displaces online banking as the hub of many customers’ relationships with their banks, successful digital banking teams will need to use mobile touchpoints both to win new customers and to sell more products and services to existing customers.17 Our reviews revealed a lack of mobile research or cross-selling features among the 15 banks — much like on online banking sites a decade ago. None did well here, though Commonwealth Bank, la Caixa, and Lloyds TSB have more on offer than the others. We evaluated firms’ mobile:

■ Research and cross-selling. Mobile banking offers an opportunity to cross-sell to existing clients and provides product information to folks shopping for financial products. There’s no doubt that smartphones have limits when it comes to researching and applying, but there’s also clear potential. Most of the banks have very little marketing in their mobile banking apps, and the information that is there is not tailored to customers and does not take into account the customers’ context.

■ Product application options. Only a few of the banks we assessed offer a way to apply for a product via an iPhone app. Commonwealth Bank of Australia has a page within its mobile app dedicated to special offers. Its credit card selector tool lets customers choose the right card and apply for it directly from the mobile app or through another channel (see Figure 16). Capturing sales leads is an important start to generating revenue from mobile banking.




Figure 16 Commonwealth Bank Makes Product Offers In Its App


Source: Commonwealth Bank of Australia iPhone app

Commonwealth Bank shows customers its current o ers . . .16-1

. . . and lets them pick a card and apply through di erent channels16-2




Most Banking apps are easy To use

Great mobile banking experiences are not simply built from a checklist of features and content. A firm’s mobile banking service must be easy for customers to understand and use.18 The substantial experience that digital banking teams have accumulated in building online interfaces has helped them avoid many basic errors. Many of the 15 apps scored well here, with Postbank and Société Générale coming in at the top with outstanding scores for usability. The best apps excel at:

■ Value. Strong mobile apps make it immediately clear to the user that his or her goals can be achieved. We looked for landing screens that include prominent links to essential content and functionality, especially personal account information and transaction functionality. Chase’s iPhone app offers a best-in-class example with a “pay bills” link directly within the account summary. La Caixa lets mobile banking users customize the landing page for their mobile banking app so they can put links relevant to them on the landing page (see Figure 17).

■ Navigation. Clear navigation is critical for mobile apps and websites because of mobile phones’ small screens. Overall navigation in the 15 apps is good; menu category names, for example, are mostly unambiguous and don’t overlap. Most banks use a persistent menu at the bottom of the screen to help users navigate. Wells Fargo uses an omnipresent drop-down menu to let mobile bankers move through the app.

■ Presentation. Digital banking teams need to make it easy to read and understand mobile content and interactive elements, and they should use graphics, icons, and other interactive elements that make their apps more intuitive and simpler to use. La Caixa is particularly strong, formatting account information for easy scanning and using spin wheels to help customers pick items from lists such as monthly statements. RBC, meanwhile, has created an internal set of mobile design standards around font sizes, colors, and touch-zone boundaries to ensure that the presentation in its iPhone app is as user-friendly as possible.

■ Trust. Mobile banking users need to have confidence that they can rely on mobile apps. Firms can build trust by ensuring that their apps are stable and by allaying security and privacy concerns with clear security and privacy policies that are easy to find, easy to read, and easy to understand. But none of the firms we assessed make it easy to find their privacy and security policies, which are often buried deep in the app. Similarly, more contextual help would be useful in many of the apps.




Figure 17 La Caixa Lets Users Customize Their Mobile App Landing Screen


Source: la Caixa iPhone app

R e c o m m e n d at i o n s

MoBiLe BaNkiNG is MeeTiNG expeCTaTioNs; NoW TRy To exCeed TheM

With mobile banking users’ expectations rising and substantial business at stake, digital banking teams know they must improve their portfolios of mobile sites and apps to deliver great customer experiences, meet business objectives, and stay ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, customers’ expectations are a moving target, and a few customers have almost ridiculously high expectations. For better or worse, digital banking teams cannot stand still. Instead, digital banking teams should look to get ahead of customers’ expectations by:

■ Listening to customers. Pay attention to what mobile banking users are saying about your apps — and those of your competitors — in app stores like iTunes and Google Play. Take inspiration from the finance-related apps people are downloading and paying for at app stores to find opportunities for future functionality. Customers will provide you with great insights into what they want and how you can improve what you offer today — though you may want to sit down with a glass of wine or whisky before reading all of their feedback.19




■ Using our scorecard to benchmark their mobile banking apps. Use Forrester’s mobile banking functionality scorecard to help identify the gaps in your current offering, see where you fall short of international best practice, and prioritize improvements.

■ Developing context-driven features that make customers’ lives simpler. You should use context — the sum total of what your customer has told you and is experiencing at his moment of engagement — to identify features and functionality that will make customers’ lives simpler.20 For example, Commonwealth Bank uses location to show customers their nearest branch and ATM on the home screen of its app.

■ Experimenting with marketing and sales offers. To make use of the full marketing potential of mobile banking, digital banking executives should go beyond the simple product campaigns, product pages, and calculators that some pioneers have already implemented and start experimenting with time- and location-triggered insurance, savings, and loan offers.

■ Regularly testing mobile features to make sure they are easy and convenient to use. Well-thought-out mobile features can be rendered useless if they are difficult to figure out or inconvenient to use. Ensure that you have a rigorous testing process in place that encompasses everything from user testing, third-party benchmarks, and employee pilots for new services.

■ Continuously improving mobile banking. The next report in this playbook looks at how digital banking teams should run mobile banking as a mature practice that focuses on optimizing mobile banking to achieve business objectives. It also helps teams identify new ways to meet customers’ needs. Leaders like Société Générale and la Caixa are considering open innovation initiatives involving employees and customers.21 Leading firms are even opening their mobile apps to external developers.22

suppLeMeNTaL MaTeRiaL

Benchmark Methodology

Forrester conducted its Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark evaluation of the 15 mobile banking apps from February 20 to March 18, 2013. Our methodology involves scoring the banks’ mobile offerings across more than 50 criteria. As far as possible, we used an iPhone 4 for criteria focused on firms’ smartphone apps and mobile websites.

If you’re interested in taking part in Forrester’s Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark or in learning more about our ongoing mobile banking research, please contact your account manager or contact Forrester’s inquiry team at [email protected].




Companies interviewed For This Report

We would like to thank the individuals from the following companies and others who generously gave their time during the research for this report. Several wished that their companies should remain anonymous.

A UK bank

A UK bank

A UK bank

Bank of America

Chase

Citibank

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Deutsche Postbank

la Caixa

Lloyds TSB

Royal Bank of Canada

TD Canada Trust

Wells Fargo

eNdNoTes1 We chose these 15 firms as representative of leading retail banks in developed economies worldwide. To

include a bank in the benchmark, we had to be able to access a real account or a fully functional test account. Please note that we do not claim that the 15 firms we reviewed are the leaders worldwide, but we believe they provide a representative benchmark of the state of mobile banking in developed economies.

2 Our logic for only including each bank’s main banking app in the benchmark is that a customer should not need to download an additional app to complete common retail banking tasks like checking balances or making payments. Note that by choosing to base the review on each bank’s main iPhone banking app, we put firms that offer multiple apps — including Barclays, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and la Caixa — at a potential disadvantage. However, the overall objective of this research is to uncover good practices, not rank the banks.

3 In both North America and Western Europe, mobile banking users mainly use their mobile banking application or website to check their balances, view their recent transactions, and transfer money between their own accounts. See the August 13, 2012, “The State Of Mobile Banking 2012” report.

4 To reflect the rapid evolution of mobile banking, we have amended some of the individual criteria since our first publication of research based on this methodology in 2012. See the April 26, 2012, “2012 US Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings” report.

5 We develop custom weightings using data from our Consumer Technographics surveys, combined with analyst insights and feedback from our digital banking clients.

6 The UK’s banks were slow to develop mobile banking, lagging in both customer adoption of smartphones and banks behind elsewhere in Europe. Although the iPhone was introduced to the UK in 2007, the first retail banking iPhone app in the UK was not until NatWest launched one in 2010. Barclays and HSBC, two







of the biggest banks in Europe, let alone the UK, didn’t offer a banking app for UK retail customers on any smartphone platform until 2012. See the January 30, 2012, “How UK Banking Customers Use Different Channels, 2011” report.

7 Source: North American Technographics Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), Q2 2012 (US, Canada).

8 La Caixa offers an impressive range of text banking services. Customers can use texts to transfer money to their favorite accounts, check their account balance, check their loyalty program balance of points, transfer money abroad (but only with financial institutions that concluded an agreement with la Caixa), check their credit card balance, pay a purchase in instalments, extend their credit card limit, and top up their prepaid card. Source: la Caixa (https://portal.lacaixa.es/caixamovil/store/applosms_es.html).

9 2012 was undoubtedly a pivotal year for tablets. With double-digit growth in tablet uptake across Western Europe, about one in seven online Europeans now owns a tablet. And with further double-digit growth expected in the years ahead, tablets are changing the consumer technology landscape. See the February 21, 2013, “The European Tablet Landscape” report.

10 In July 2011, Citibank officially launched its first-ever tablet banking app, but the true breakthrough took place five months earlier, when eBusiness leaders at the bank began the process of developing a tablet banking strategy and building their first iPad app. Forrester spoke with Tracey Weber, managing director, Internet and mobile banking at Citibank, and Andres Wolberg-Stok, SVP of strategy for mobile and emerging technologies at Citibank, about that process. To find out more, see the January 19, 2012, “Case Study: Citibank’s Tablet App Transforms The Digital Banking Experience” report.

11 For more information about this feature in Dutch, please visit the Rabobank website (http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/producten/mobiele_diensten/bankieren_op_mobiel/rabo_bankieren_app/).

12 Overall, Chase leads by offering the widest array of mobile money movement options to users: everything from bill payments, automated clearinghouse, and wire transfers to P2P payments. Chase also offers mobile customers the ability to set up future-dated transfers and bill payments, plus the option of adding a payee for P2P or bill pay from within the mobile app.

13 BPay is an electronic bill payment service that Australia’s leading banks, building societies, and credit unions offer as a core feature of Internet and phone banking.

14 Rabobank’s “acceptgiroscan” feature lets users pay bills by taking a picture of the acceptgiro (a Dutch paper payment instrument that is similar to an invoice) with the phone’s built-in camera. Optical character recognition (OCR) software then reads and translates the scanned image and prefills all the necessary form fields. For more details please visit the Rabobank website (http://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/producten/mobiele_diensten/bankieren_op_mobiel/rabo_bankieren_app/).

15 The Interac e-Transfer service is a cooperative venture available to Canadian financial firms.

16 Barclays offers person-to-person payments through its Pingit app and Commonwealth Bank of Australia through its Kaching app.









Commonwealth Bank of Australia enables multiple types of payment, including transfers between a customer’s own accounts, transfers to other accounts, bill payments through Australia’s BPay service, MasterCard PayPass payments at the point of sale (using an iCarte case, not an integrated NFC chip), payments to friends through email addresses and mobile numbers, and even payments through Facebook. For more information, visit its website: http://www.commbank.com.au/mobile/commbank-kaching/what-is-kaching.html.

Pingit lets users send money to a recipient using the recipient’s phone number or pay a business using a QR code. For more information, visit the Barclays website: http://www.barclays.co.uk/Mobile/BarclaysPingit/P1242603570446.

17 To make use of the full marketing potential of mobile banking, digital banking executives should go beyond the simple product campaigns, product pages, and calculators that some pioneers have already implemented and start experimenting with time- and location-triggered insurance, savings, and loan offers. See the April 5, 2011, “The Time Is Right To Start Experimenting With Mobile Banking For Marketing And Sales” report.

18 If you think mobile app design is about choosing the best development tools and designing for a smaller screen size, guess again. To deliver apps your users will love, you must design and develop a user experience that is useful, usable, and desirable and that takes into account the mobile context, and you have to design for emotion. See the August 7, 2012, “Design Mobile Apps From The Outside In” report.

19 While customer feedback in iTunes, Google Play, and other venues is a very useful indicator of what functionality customers want, it is also obvious from reading customer feedback that some customers have extremely high expectations, and a few provide feedback that is harsh and occasionally even nasty.

20 Consumers will adopt and use convenient services and products. In mobile, this translates to services that offer immediacy and simplicity through a highly contextual experience. The ability to deliver highly contextual experiences will increase in sophistication with the technologies embedded in mobile phones. eBusiness and channel strategy professionals must use context to deliver the right information at the right time to the right place to increase conversions. See the May 1, 2012, “The Future Of Mobile eBusiness Is Context” report.

21 Product innovation isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have, particularly in light of the rapid changes taking place at the intersection of technology and consumer behavior. Product strategists must update their closed product innovation processes with open innovation initiatives to keep pace with the rapid changes affecting markets and end user customers. See the June 11, 2012, “Revolutionize Products Through Open Innovation” report.

22 To help it develop new mobile services, la Caixa organized a 24-hour “FinAppsParty,” during which participants competed to create new mobile banking apps. La Caixa organized its first FinAppsParty in Barcelona in November 2011. The 24-hour event attracted more than 100 developers and resulted in 40 proposals for different applications. Source: “‘la Caixa’ organises the first FinAppsParty in Barcelona, to attract talent to mobile banking development,” la Caixa press release, November 11, 2011 (http://press.lacaixa.es/caixabank/press-releases/la-caixa-organises-the-first-finappsparty-in-barcelona-to-attract-talent-to-mobile-banking-development__1775-c-15176__.html).







Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology. Forrester works with professionals in 17 key roles at major companies providing proprietary research, customer insight, consulting, events, and peer-to-peer executive programs. For more than 29 years, Forrester has been making IT, marketing, and technology industry leaders successful every day. For more information, visit www.forrester.com. 75591

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