The American Bankers Association (ABA) released the results of its 2011 survey of US consumers’ preferences of banking channels. The survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults found that:
62% of adults prefer to use the online channel to do their banking — up from 36 percent in last year’s survey. And for the first time, the majority (57%) of customers 55 and older say they opt to do their banking online, a significant increase from 20% in 2010. The popularity of all other banking methods has declined since last year’s survey, with preference for branches dropping from 25% to 20% and preference for ATMs dropping from 15%to 8%. The least preferred method of banking was the mobile channel, which dropped from 3% in 2011 to 1% this year.
My take: I have three reactions to these findings:
1. The shift is too dramatic. I’ve been doing consumer research in the financial services industry for most of the past 12 years — looking at the adoption of online banking, online bill pay, account aggregation, eStatements, PFM, etc. — and I have never seen, year over the year, the kind of change reported by the ABA.
From 2010 to 2011, the percentage of 55+ year-old consumers that prefer to bank online nearly tripled from 20% to 57%. Why? What the hell happened between last year and this year that suddenly made Boomers wake up to the benefits of online banking?
Even the shift among all adults — from26% to 62% — is huge, but it’s hard to tell how much of that shift is being influenced by the 55+ segment (it shouldn’t be too much if the sample is representative). Did Gen Yers wake up one morning and discover online banking? And are you trying to tell me that a significant percentage of them shifted their preference from the branch and ATM? No way.
2. We need to ask more specific questions. Whatever the reason for the tectonic shifts in preferences, the results of the study convince me that we researchers need to get a little more specific when asking about channel preferences. Specifically, we need to ask about channel preferences for specific types of interactions and transactions. Eight percent of consumers might say that they prefer to bank by ATM, but the reality is that they can’t do everything they need to (potentially) do with a bank through the ATM.
3. The mobile number is out of whack. If asked, before I saw the results, to guess what percentage preferred the mobile channel, my guess would have been a lot higher than 1%. I would have guessed that it would have doubled from 3% to 6%. That number might seem to low to you, but keep in mind that only about 15% of US adults are using mobile banking. So 6% of 15% would mean that 4 out of 10 mobile bankers prefer the mobile channel to all others. But the percentage didn’t double — in fact, it dropped. Very counter-intuitive.