Consumers Are Increasingly Using Digital Channels, Bank Earnings Reveal
The earnings season has barely begun.And among the plethora of bank reports released on Friday (Oct. 14) – the trio of JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo – a few data indicators indicate continuing patterns in consumer spending inquiries and remarks.
A highlight is the continuous shift toward doing all banking online.
At least so far, commentary on earnings calls has been rather generic. Each of these bank CEOs emphasised that technological investments remain on the agenda. In the earnings supplements, we can observe that the number of digitally engaged customers and those using mobile channels is increasing.
In the Citigroup call discussion, management noted that 2% of the 8% expenditure rise year-over-year was attributable to technology investments, with a focus on integrating technology platforms.
Total and Mobile Digital Channels Expansion
The Citigroup supplementals indicate that the number of active mobile users increased by 12% year-over-year to 17 million, out of a total of 24 million digital users, which increased by 8% year-over-year. Citi was not the only bank to win digital customers.
According to comments from CEO Charlie Scharf, Wells Fargo launched a branded digital experience throughout the quarter. “In the third quarter, we continued to launch new APIs, providing our commercial and corporate clients more flexibility and helping them drive efficiencies. For example, we launched a new real-time payment API allowing clients to send digital requests to a payer that can be approved to easily send a real-time credit transfer,” made a point of saying Scharf.
In its own papers, the corporation reported that it had 28.3 million mobile active subscribers, a 5% increase from the previous year. In the same time period, the total number of digitally engaged consumers rose by 3% to 33.6 million.
Active mobile clients increased by 10% to 48.9 million, while active digital customers increased by 7% year-over-year to 62 million, according to JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon, who said that the company’s tech-focused expenditures were “on track.”
59% of people across 11 nations use digital banking services, according to collected data. Singapore, Spain and the U.K. are creating unforgettable on the international stage, as discussed in detail in “Benchmarking the World’s Digital Transformation, The ConnectedEconomy.” We wrote in that document that the “availability of attractive mobile banking alternatives to brick-and-mortar banking — coupled with the widespread availability of smartphones — drives both adoption and usage.”
