Telecom Lead India: Asia has the highest mobile banking penetration in the world, according to a survey by Bain & Company.
47 percent of survey respondents in South Korea had mobile interactions in the previous three months, the highest penetration in the survey.
Respondents in the U.S. reported the highest frequency, averaging 4.9 mobile transactions in the previous three months.
Mobile banking is having the biggest impact on routine banking activities: 64 percent of mobile banking users in the U.S. say that the future ability to use their smartphones or tablets to check account balances would be highly valued.
41 percent of mobile banking consumers say that using their smart device for remote deposit capture (through a digital image of an endorsed check) would be highly valued, and 26 percent say that paying bills through their mobile device in the future would be highly valued.
“Mobile banking presents profit-strapped banks with an opportunity to shift routine transactions from high-cost physical channels to much lower-cost digital channels,” said Gerard du Toit, Bain financial services partner and lead author of the report.
Across all banking models, U.S. mobile users report greater loyalty. The loyalty shift is most pronounced with larger national banks, where loyalty scores move from negative to positive territory.
National banks have developed more advanced mobile functionality than their community bank and credit union counterparts.
The report finds that both Citi and JPMorgan Chase improved their customer loyalty scores relative to other large banks since Bain’s 2011 customer loyalty in retail banking survey.
There is also a clear divide in loyalty among affluent customers by region. Customer loyalty scores are highest in Asia and developing markets.
Wealthier customers surveyed in the U.S. and European countries continue to give the lowest loyalty scores. U.S. national banks fare particularly poorly, with solidly negative scores among households with more than $1,000,000 in investable assets.
The picture is quite different in Asia and other developing markets, where banks have developed differentiated modes of targeting and serving the affluent and have far more extensive wealth management operations than in the U.S.
