What’s the future of mobile banking in Europe? - McKinsey Quarterly - Financial Services - Banking

Bankers across Europe believe that mobile devices will transform the retail-banking landscape in the next three to five years, but also believe they are not investing sufficiently to take advantage of the opportunities. They also think mobile service providers and other nonbanks are leading the way. That might come as a surprise to some, but banking applications and services are among the few new businesses tier-one telcos can get into that offer enough incremental revenue to justify the effort.

The study by McKinsey and the European Financial Management and Marketing Association also suggests that mobile devices’ overall economic impact on the banking industry may be neutral at best.

Individual banks should be able to increase their revenues and cut costs if they successfully exploit the convenience of mobile, its potential to drive digital commerce, and the opportunity it represents to target the unbanked in emerging markets, researchers at McKinsey say.

Some banks, however, may find that mobile adds to costs and erodes prices unless they offer a truly differentiated product or service. Mobile banking in Europe

Some 87 percent of banks aim to have a mobile site, and 84 percent are planning to launch some sort of mobile-banking “app” within the next 12 months, compared with 59 percent and 47 percent, respectively, that have them now. The mobile features these institutions currently offer are traditional banking services, such as the ability to check account balances and recent transactions and to conduct simple transactions. But 70 percent of banks said they plan to add more advanced functionality within the next 12 months.