FinTech
Wells Fargo Leads the Pack in Mobile Banking Features
The past year hasn’t been the best for Wells Fargo. Last September it was revealed that Wells Fargo employees had created upwards of two million accounts without their customers’ knowledge. Then, in August of this year, the company discovered another 1.4 million fake accounts, bringing the total to around 3.5 million. Despite the fallout from that scandal, it seems the institution is excelling in at least one area: mobile banking.
According to a study by BI Intelligence, Wells Fargo tops other banks when it comes to offering the mobile banking features customers want. With a score of 82 (out of 100), they narrowly beat out USAA with 79. Rounding out the top five were Bank of America (73), Citibank (73), and Capital One (72). To arrive at this conclusion, BI first ranked the 33 top-rated features customers say they want in a mobile banking app and looked at which of the top 15 banks and credit unions offered such functionality.
So what helped put Wells Fargo atop its peers? Some of the features mentioned include transfers, the ability to temporarily disable cards, a Facebook Messenger chatbot, and news that the bank was rolling out 5,000 mobile-equipped ATMs. As ironic as it may sound, the bank also got high marks in terms of its security.
While it ranked second overall, there were some areas where USAA bested Wells Fargo. For example the branchless, military-serving bank had the highest scores for both account access and use of artificial intelligence. Notably USAA also offers integration with Amazon’s Alexa and supports such biometric features as voice and facial recognition.
Elsewhere on the list, Bank of America was also recognized for their deployment of mobile-equipped ATMs. Also noteworthy is third-place Citibank’s Citi Pay initiative, which helped it top the “Wallet” section of the scorecard (interestingly Chase and Chase Pay missed the top five overall). Another feature that helped Citi climb the chart was the ability to order a replacement card via their mobile app.
BI’s report highlights just how important mobile banking has become in the lives of consumers. Given the troubles Wells Fargo has faced in recent months, it would appear the bank’s plan to win customers back is to emphasize mobile features — a strategy that seems to be paying off. That said, it would be interesting to see a similar study done that included smaller players to see how some of the FinTech firms measure up to the big guys in terms of customer satisfaction on mobile. Of course, should any of these top banks begin to drop the ball on mobile, there will surely be a scrappy startup to take advantage. In the meantime (as strange as it may be to say), well done, Wells Fargo.
