12 of the 16 surveyed banks were already offering some or other mobile financial services, 1 big bank planned to (re-)launch them next year, and 3 banks did not have any plans, as of now, to launch Mobile Banking.
However, 2 of them reported a “wait and watch” policy. They expected Mobile Banking to establish itself in the long run but did not wish to take a pioneer role themselves. The third participant did not see any future for Mobile Banking in its house; justifying its opinion with a conservative cus-tomer structure.
One relatively small-sized bank offering a limited scope of mobile ser-vices referred to them as an “alibi offer” meant for customers who proac-tively enquired about it. That bank did not see any significant relevance for Mobile Banking in its house, owing to what it termed was a “unique” cus-tomer structure.
Current Offers of Mobile Banking No plans;
19%
Offered;
69%
Planned;
6%
n = 16
Eyes on the future: 5 banks reported to have been offering mobile services for the past 5 years; others between 3 and 4 years. All banks that agreed to go on record about the number of their Mobile Banking users stated this number to be less than 1% of all retail customers. One bank reported the number of its customers utilising SMS alert service to be 5% of all retail customers, the number of customers using other banking services was how-ever again below 1%. That means Mobile Banking does not yet play any significant role in the banking business. Mobile Banking remains, as of now, a niche product and banks are positioning themselves in this field, apparently, with an eye on the future.
Free-of-charge services: The perception of positioning for the future was enforced by the fact that most banks offered mobile services for either completely or nearly free-of-charge. Only 2 banks, Citibank Deutschland and Sparda Bank Hamburg, reported nominal monthly fees of €1.50 and
€1.00 respectively for receiving SMS alerts. One bank reported in-principle plans to charge fees for service utilisation. Another bank plan-ning to launch mobile services next year intends to charge a fee of €0.20 per transaction.
Having made us familiar with the composition of this survey, we may now have a brief glance at product portfolios in the field of Mobile Bank-ing.
9.2.3 Product Portfolios in Mobile Banking
The participant banks were asked to confirm the findings of our desktop research about their current offers on mobile financial services. But more importantly, they were asked about their future planning on services that were currently not on offer. In case a bank thought some particular ser-vice was not suitable for Mobile Banking, they had the option to charac-terise it as such. It was recognised that not all services considered suitable for Mobile Banking have to be offered by each bank since each bank must examine every individual service for value-added that it might generate for its (potential) customers. In the following, we present the results, grouped in three sub-applications, as defined in section 6.2.
9.2.3.1 Mobile Accounting
Positions of banks to individual services belonging to this sub-application are described below.
Money remittances: This was the most extensively offered service in the realm of Mobile Accounting. Out of 12 banks offering Mobile Banking, 6 were already providing this service to their customers (50%), another 3 were planning to introduce this service (25%). None characterised it as unsuitable.
Standing orders for bill payments: 4 banks were planning to introduce the option of administering standing orders via mobile devices. Further 2 banks, namely Postbank and Sparda Bank, Hamburg, were already provid-ing this service. One bank, plannprovid-ing to launch mobile services, considered it unsuitable.
Subscribing standard insurance policies: 8 of the 12 banks (67%) offering mobile services referred to subscription of insurance policies via mobile devices as unsuitable for Mobile Banking. None of the surveyed banks was offering, or planning to introduce, this service.
Access administration: 6 of the 12 banks (50%) offering mobile services provided the facility to administrate account access via mobile devices; 1 planned it while 2 other considered it to be unsuitable.
Card management: Just 1 surveyed bank (Sparda Bank, Hamburg) was offering this service; 5 others were planning to introduce it. This in itself is a positive development, as during our 2001 survey none of the then exam-ined banks wanted to introduce this service citing high investment costs coupled with low utility as a main reason. Even when an overwhelming majority (68%) of the then surveyed participants had expressly desired this service and 43% were willing to pay a certain fee for it.92 Only 2 banks referred to this service as unsuitable.
The discussion above shows that there is some remarkable movement in the landscape of Mobile Accounting. Pioneer work in the field of Mobile Accounting was being done, as far as the number of offered services is concerned, by Sparda Bank, Hamburg, closely followed by Postbank.
92 For more details see [Wesse, 2001, pp. 162-163].
9.2.3.2 Mobile Brokerage
Positions of banks to individual services belonging to this sub-application are described below.
Selling & purchasing financial instruments: 2 of the surveyed banks (Post-bank and comdirect) were currently offering this service, 3 (Post-banks planned to offer it, while 2 others considered it unsuitable.
Order book administration: This service was offered only by comdirect, 3 others (not identical to the 3 in the earlier mentioned service) were plan-ning to introduce it, 2 banks rejected this service as unsuitable.
Access administration: 4 of the 12 banks offering mobile services offered the facility to administer account access via mobile devices, 1 bank was planning it, and 2 banks (not identical to those rejecting the earlier men-tioned services) thought it to be unsuitable for Mobile Banking.
This discussion suggests that Mobile Brokerage is treated with certain reservations by many banks. The reason could lay in high security- as well as legal requirements for brokerage transaction coupled with a low cus-tomer demand.
Judging from the number of offered services in the field of Mobile Bro-kerage, comdirect was the leading provider with all 3 services in its product portfolio, closely followed by Postbank with 2 services.
9.2.3.3 Mobile Financial Information
Positions of banks to individual services belonging to Mobile Financial Information are described below.
Balance enquiries: This service seems to be highly popular: 8 of the 12 banks (67%) offering mobile financial services provided their customers with this facility, 2 other banks are planning to launch it, thereby increasing the penetration of this service to 83% amongst institutions with Mobile Banking. No bank rejected it.
Transaction thresholds: This service was also popular: 4 banks were offer-ing it already; further 4 were plannoffer-ing to introduce it. None considered it unsuitable.
Balance thresholds: Balance threshold alerts were offered by 3 of the 12 banks, another 4 planned to launch it, while 1 bank rejected this service as unsuitable.
Stock price alerts: Stock price alerts enjoyed a response on similar lines.
4 of the 12 banks were offering it already, 3 planned to launch them soon, 1 bank regarded them as unsuitable.
Branches & ATM finder: This service seems to be gaining increasing ac-ceptance. Whereas only 2 of the surveyed banks, Credit Suisse and Post-bank, had this service already in their product portfolio, 4 others were plan-ning to launch it. Further 2 banks called it unsuitable. Interestingly enough, one of them was a bank that does not maintain branches; the other one a bank with business interests limited primarily to metropolitan regions.
Information on the completion status of an order: Also this service is ex-periencing an upturn: 4 banks were offering this service, another 4 were planning it. None of the surveyed banks with mobile services saw it as un-suitable.
Stock market reports and enquiries: 5 of the 12 banks with mobile offers have this service in their portfolio, 2 others are planning to launch it, 1 bank called it unsuitable for Mobile Banking.
Exchange rates and interest rates enquiries: 4 banks, amongst them not surprisingly both of the Swiss banks, are already offering this service, while 2 others are planning it. 2 banks called it unsuitable.
Product information & conditions: This service, which did not receive very encouraging user ratings, seems to be popular with the banks: 3 banks (all from the category of public sector banks) were offering this service to their customers, 3 others were planning to introduce it. However, 3 banks called it unsuitable.
Some other services, e.g. maintaining model depots and opening ac-counts via mobile devices were offered, too. Sparkassen Direkt offered the option of appointment management using a mobile device.
The most extensive offer on Mobile Financial Information was found to be that of Sparkassen Direkt, which offered all other services mentioned above, with the only exception of “Branches & ATM Finder”. A close sec-ond was Postbank which offered almost all services as of now and had plans to introduce new services currently not in its portfolio. Thus, we can
also see Postbank as “the” pioneer in the field of mobile services in Ger-many, as it maintains the most extensive portfolio when seen in a complete perspective across all the three sub-applications.
Mobile Financial Information seems to be a favourite application of German banks with many services either being already offered or currently in the pipeline, as seen in the discussion above.
After describing the landscape of mobile financial services amongst sur-veyed banks, we can now have a look on the technological mediums em-ployed.
9.2.4 Mediums of Mobile Banking
In order to test the preferences of banks regarding mediums of Mobile Banking, survey participants were asked about mediums that they em-ployed. This section presents the answers of 12 banks that are currently offering mobile services.