This post is part of the series we began in August entitled: 12 Reasons Why Canadian Banks Should Really Offer Mobile Services. As a Canadian consumer of financial services I want those services on my mobile now! This is all part of my own little push to get it done.
Unlike other channels, the mobile channel does not require a customer to go somewhere; nor does it require a bank representative to go to the customer. The mobile channel is with the customer. It is on a belt, hanging from a backpack, at a bedside table, in a purse or on a desk. It is always close enough so as not to miss the next phone call, email or text message.
Today a mobile phone is both a business productivity tool and a fashion accessory… it is a cultural lifeline and an emergency hotline. Over two-thirds (72%) of Canadian households have access to a wireless phone in a country where 98% of its people live in an area with wireless coverage. The mobile channel represents a unique opportunity to financial services providers due to its personal nature (my phone, my pictures, my address book, my emails, my songs, my themes, my ringtones) as well as its immediacy (close enough for me to hear it or feel it).
Mobility and banking on a mobile device is not just another banking delivery channel. It is more than the simple delivery of content to a mobile individual and it is certainly more than the push of existing services to a mobile form factor. Mobile financial services is about empowering the financial services consumer and placing the control back into their hands. It is not about data and it is not about the delivery of that data. It is about a person in a mobile context. The question then becomes – what does this person need in relation to their finances while mobile? And …how can this person relate to their financial assets and the bankers that hold those assets… while mobile?
In Canada ownership is more personal than ever before… with 70% of Canadians personally owning their wireless phones, while the remaining 30% had access to their wireless phones through employers, self-employment or someone else in the household. There was also a marked growth in the use of wireless phones for personal purposes. An interesting number in this category is that almost half of the respondents (46%) have used their wireless phone to help them out of an emergency situation.
Click on the images to see a gallery of graphs.
If the mobile channel is so personal and can provide the perfect delivery mechanism for financial service organizations … why isn’t it leveraged in Canada the way it should?
Why is the Canadian financial services consumer deprived of this experience?
(Please note all figures are from the 2008 Wireless Attitudes Study from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association -
September 12, 2008)
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