I am interested how other community institutions have justified contracting for mobile banking products? I mean full blown mobile banking with Apps, mobile sites, and SMS/Text. This is something I am currently struggling with. Obviously its a retention tool but does not offer a ROI in the short term. So is your bank offering mobile banking? If so how did you justify the expediture to the board of directors?

We are not, or rather have not yet, started mobile banking. I think the ROI argument is fairly moot considering its a free service and is more so about retention as you mentioned.

The part we have a hard time justifying similar to you is the typical "high cost" associated with an implentation of any and all methods as you described. Even more so we have a hard time justifying the risks of mobile banking (even in the most locked down capacity) before we even get into the cost discussion.

Ultimately the argument you should focus on is customer need? You should have access to your website analytics which would highlight how many customers are "accessing" your site via a mobile browser to begin with. This should begin to tell you, thanks to sophistication in mobile browsing, how many of your customers may be "mobile" banking without your help or protection.

Be careful when considering this data however because it may be a false metric in terms of mobile banking adoption. People may just legitimately be looking up hours, locations, etc... with no "mobile banking" intent, but it is still a good metric for addressing possible adoption.

From there our banks position is, if we can justify the risks, we can justify the product as "keeping up with the joneses." Any other argument you try to make becomes like quick sand and easily defeated in terms of actual cost benefit argument. We just haven't fully mitigated the risks, but we consider the cost just one of doing business in modern banking.

Hope that helps a bit.

Cheers!

In a Press Release on March 14, 2012, the Federal Reserve releases a report titled Consumers and Mobile Financial Services. In the report, they state one out of five American consumers used their mobile phone to access their bank account, credit card, or other financial account in the 12 months ending in January 2012. They further suggest usage could possibly increase to one out of three mobile phone users by 2013. It goes on to discuss age and ethnicity demographics as well as skepticism on benefits and security. This could be an interesting report for bank's looking for trends or considering mobile banking.

Thanks,
Russ

What providers are you looking at? Some are more cost effective than others.

I would suggest you start with a WAP / web browser solution and then based on that sucess layer on apps, etc.

The costs are definitely all over the board when it comes to mobile banking products, so definitely shop around. We saw huge differences between offerings and costs when we were looking.

I definitely say mobile is getting high up in the list of products that a customer expects or assumes your bank should have, of course still below staples like online banking and ATM cards.

Not saying it's a "must" yet, but we had many customers find our app on the app stores before we rolled out that we had mobile banking. That's how much they were looking for it!

After the FTC's report to Congress on Privacy issues and SmartPhone's in March 2012 -the EU, Japan, South Africa and numerous Congressmen calling for more protection - google's admissions that they believe there should be no policing and there is no privacy over the "internet"...it will be interesting to see how far technology has greatly outpaced consumer protection, especially with mobile banking. That in light of the CFPB's policy statement yesterday about FI's liability even for "legal" behavior of their providers..Google admits it provides third parties infromation it gathers. If you use an Android Smartphone, what have they told whom about that use?

The article Russ Horn pointed out is an excellent study from an unbiased source. I've read loads of studies conducted by mobile app vendors... its never surprising when they say mobile is a must have!

WAP-enabled browsers are pretty cheap, and should be justifiable as a basic cost of doing business. You won't drive new customers to the bank with a mobile app, nor will you likely lose existing customers if you don't have one (for now, maybe in the future you might). But it is more and more likely that people will start expecting you to have this tech. A WAP basically a mobile-enhanced version of your current internet website and online banking platform. Customers navigate to it through their browser (and can add a shortcut to their home screen if desired) and there is no need to maintain multiple native apps or update apps for new OS releases. And according to every study I have seen, most customers want to just use their native browser and not have to download applications and download app updates.

If you are marketing to consumers, the WAP will have every basic requirement of a mobile app. You only need to go to MEAP/Native apps if you need mobile capture or some other advanced feature(s).