Mobile banking success is a moving target: Customers needs and expectations are changing rapidly, and eBusiness teams at banks are sprinting to get ahead of their customers’ expectations. To achieve this, firms are rolling out new features, optimizing existing services, and enhancing mobile experiences.  

To understand which firms are leading in mobile banking — and to better gauge the mobile banking landscape overall — we used our Mobile Banking Functionality Benchmark to evaluate and rank the mobile banking efforts of 15 of the largest banks in North America, Western Europe, and Australia.

Our findings across all the banks we evaluated can be found in our 2013 Global Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings. We've also published two additional reports looking at the banks we reviewed in the UK and the US: 2013 UK Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings and 2013 US Mobile Banking Functionality Rankings

Highlights of this research include these findings:

• Chase takes the top spot overall. Chase received the highest overall score among the banks we evaluated, netting a score of 71 out of 100. The bank offers mobile banking services across a range of touchpoints ranging from smartphone apps, strong mobile websites, and two-way SMS. In addition, Chase also has strong mobile money movement features such as bill pay – including the ability to add a payee – and mobile transfer capabilities.

The rapid development of customer touchpoints and rising customer expectations turn up the pressure on eBusiness professionals at retail banks to continue investing in digital channels. Even with the rising pressure, few eBusiness executives report having the resources needed to execute a strategy that supports customers who use multiple channels. Forrester partnered with the Consumer Bankers Association for the second year to survey digital banking executives for the “The State Of North American Digital And Multichannel Banking 2013” report. The goal of the research was to better understand how digital banking teams are focusing their strategic energy, investing in digital channels, building multichannel capabilities, and measuring the digital business. We found that:

• Consumers are increasingly using multiple channels. Almost one-third of eBusiness executives we surveyed believe that more than half of their customers regularly use more than one channel. Yet few banks have connected their multiple channels to create an integrated multichannel experience -- allowing customers to seamlessly move between channels.
• While most banks have a multichannel strategy, few have the resources to execute. Most eBusiness executives indicate they have a digital strategy, yet only a few report having the budget or dedicated multichannel teams to support executing a strategy. Without dedicated resources, multichannel will remain a pipe dream.

Late last year, Forrester reviewed and ranked the secure websites of the 12 largest retail banks in the US and Canada. The full reports can be found here (US) and here (Canada). Overall, banks' secure websites earned an average score of 70 points (out of 100), demonstrating a level of quality that meets customers expectations but also leaves room for improvements. Here are some of the highlights:

• Citi moves to the top of the US rankings with a website overhaul. In July 2011, Citi launched its first tablet banking app. Based in part on insights gleaned from that process, the bank rolled out a newly redesigned secure website, followed by additional digital features and functionality for online bankers, mobile bankers, and tablet bankers. As a result, Citi moved from second-to-last in our ranking to the top spot this year.
• RBC pulls off a historic sixth-straight win among Canadian banks' secure sites. For a record sixth year, RBC earned the top spot in our Canadian rankings. Two factors drive RBC’s digital banking success: First, the bank's secure website offers a wide array of secure site features, including eBills, tax management tools, and more; second, the bank continues to innovate, this year adding customizable money management dashboards and new mobile features such as foreign exchange and mortgage payment calculators on its iPhone app.

Whether you’ve been naughty or nice this year, you probably have a wishlist for your business. We thought it would be fun and interesting to find out what some of your wishes are, so the Digital Banking Strategy team at Forrester reached out to some of our eBusiness clients at banks and asked them “What one ‘wish’ do you have for your team’s digital banking efforts or strategy in 2013?”

Here are some of the answers we got back:

1. “We wish we could transform every branch and call center employee into an advocate for marketing and educating customers on our digital capabilities.”
2. “I wish that our execs would understand how understaffed we are.”
3. “I wish we had better live help for our digital banking customers.”
4. “I wish I knew which area of mobile payments to focus on and what is going to ‘shake out’ and actually ‘stick,’ so to speak.”
5. “We wish for a digitalized branch pilot that focuses on advice and guidance.”
6. “We wish all of our customers – including the most skittish and skeptical – would try out our digital banking capabilities (online, mobile, and tablet)… and those who already use them would do so even more regularly.”
7. “I wish I could spend 3 hours with our CMO – and have his full attention – to show him how much impact our online and mobile banking efforts have.”
8. “I wish we could sort through the clutter of mobile wallet vendors and offerings to know which will actually pan out.”
9. “I wish I could snap my fingers and have great secure site search and intelligent cross-selling on our secure site.”
10. “a pink pony.”