News

Mobile services pay off for FIs, research finds

Credit union members who use mobile banking generate 36 percent more for the FI revenue than branch-only users; for banks the payoff is twice the size — 72 percent, a Fiserv study finds.

January 25, 2016

Consumers who use a financial institution's mobile banking services are likely to use more of that FI's products, make more transactions and remain more loyal.

So says newly released research from Fiserv Inc., a provider of financial services technology solutions. The company has published "Mobile Banking Adoption: Where Is the Revenue for Financial Institutions?" a new white paper based on the results of a yearlong study measuring the return on investment of mobile banking services for financial institutions.

According to a press release, the study included eight credit unions and nine banks and evaluated data from more than 67,000 mobile banking users.

Researchers tracked the actions of mobile banking users three months before and three months after they started using the service.

In addition to affirming that mobile banking use is associated with lower attrition, the study revealed three key insights, Fiserv said:

• mobile users significantly increased their holdings in loans, certificates of deposit, credit cards, and mortgages, averaging 2.3 products from their primary FI, vs. 1.3 products for branch-only customers — a 75 percent increase;
• survey participants increased their number of debit and credit card transactions, ATM transactions and ACH transactions; 
• mobile banking users generater more revenue than nonusers, due in part to the fact that they own more products and conduct more transactions.
  Credit union members who use mobile banking generate 36 percent more revenue than branch-only members. This number doubles to 72 percent for banks.

"The financial institutions in this study are seeing tangible revenue from mobile banking," said Matt Wilcox, senior vice president of marketing strategy and innovation, Fiserv. "Marketing mobile banking and highlighting how it can help consumers keep pace with the speed of life is absolutely essential if financial institutions want to grow adoption and use of the service and reap the benefits of their mobile investment."