Javelin Strategy & Research released the 2024 editions of its annual Mobile Banking Scorecard and Online Banking Scorecard, with U.S. Bank earning Best in Class in both scorecards and ending Bank of America’s six-year reign atop both scorecards.
The 2024 Scorecards highlight the growing importance to consumers of an intuitive experience and secure digital access to manage their accounts. Together, ease of use and security drive the majority of consumers’ satisfaction with digital banking, according to Javelin’s analysis of 10,119 consumers surveyed in May.
U.S. Bank had been gaining on Bank of America for several years, and steady upgrades to its digital experiences resulted in the bank’s first “Best in Class” designations. The runners-up were the same in both channels, with Bank of America finishing second and Wells Fargo capturing third.
A growing functional gap among leading banks demonstrates the importance of paying attention to security and ease of use in digital banking. “Consumer sentiment is clear: An app loaded with features won’t cut it if it isn’t secure and makes it hard to find to find what you need,” said Emmett Higdon, Director of Digital Banking at Javelin. “Even top financial institutions have a long way to go to deliver.”
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Javelin’s scorecards evaluate more than 230 criteria in each channel at 20 of the largest retail financial institutions in the United States, providing the industry’s most detailed and strategic benchmark of evolving digital banking experiences. Key takeaways that Javelin’s analysts noted in this year’s scorecards include:
- Banks continue to struggle with high-engagement basics, including improving transaction ledgers for quick oversight, providing timely insights into accounts, and encouraging deeper exploration through search or chat bots.
- Top FIs are more proactively engaging customers in the fight against fraud, exemplified by the development of prominent, feature-rich security centers and recurring email marketing campaigns.
- While chatbots have become a default in mobile banking, with all but three top 20 banks now supporting one, few are supporting more than simple FAQ-like responses to customer inquiries.
- Consumers complain loudly about mobile deposit functionality that continues to suffer from three lingering issues: deposit limits that are too low, delayed access to funds, and uncertainty about when funds will be available.
- Financial Fitness remains the industry’s weakest-performing category because half of top-20 FIs are essentially watching from the sidelines and missing opportunities to evolve from do-it-yourself to help-me-do it engagement.
Javelin’s scorecards focus on six functional categories: Ease of Use, Security Empowerment, Money Movement, Financial Fitness, Customer Service, and, new this year, Relationship Deepening.
“Every bank and credit union is hunting for ways to turn glance-and-go digital activity into deeper relationships,” said Mark Schwanhausser, Director of the Digital Banking. “This new category underscores the importance of engaging customers beyond transactions with features that boost awareness and usage of digital features, build loyalty, and continually bolster primary-FI status long after the account is opened.”
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