Will Voice Recognition Kill Online Banking?

This article was first published on The Financial Brand.

Technology has often been the driver for the banking industry to reinvent itself. Over the last half century, technologies that we embrace today, such as ATMs, debit cards, online banking and mobile banking each have pushed the financial sector to meet evolving customer needs. Financial institutions today are again looking to incipient technologies such as voice recognition, biometric authentication, robo banking, and artificial intelligence to shape the future of the industry.

In today’s financial world, one of the most frequent touchpoints between a consumer and a typical bank or credit union is through online banking (Web and/or mobile application). In fact, usage of online banking is typically higher than contact through call centers and branches combined.

Given this regularity of usage, consumer satisfaction with their financial institution is significantly influenced by their experience with online banking. Despite the importance of this channel, the advancements in technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and voice recognition may be the ultimate demise of the online banking channel as we know it.

Over the past 5 years, we have analyzed Web analytics data on public websites, Web online banking, and mobile applications for over 100 banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions. This research has spanned from large international financial institutions to small county-focused credit unions. In that research, we have found that, on average, over 85% of the traffic to a public website of a financial institution is there to login to online banking. Depending on how heavily the organization focuses on marketing to new prospects, the percentage of users on the site that are current customers can range from 55% to 98%.

In almost every case, the majority of visitors to a financial website are current customers and the majority of those customers log into online banking during their visit. Furthermore, when analyzing the click-paths of these customers we find a highly task-focused group of users. Between 50% and 80% of the customers that come to the website have a short click-path that looks something like this.

Read the full article on The Financial Brand.