While consumers are beginning to embrace digital financial management, they remain hesitant to dive in completely, according to a recent report by Javelin Strategy & Research.

One indication today: More consumers receive their statements online than through the mail, but more than 25% of consumers double dip—receiving both paper and electronic statements.

Digital financial management offers both financial institutions and billers a gateway to deeper customer engagement and increased profitability, while consumers can gain greater control, access, and security of their finances. Javelin’s Customer-Driven Architecture provides a blueprint for converting consumers to a digital lifestyle and outlines the seven sequential steps that will enable financial institutions and billers to transform customers into digital financial managers.

Digital financial management is still in its infancy. To date, the financial services industry has focused on turning off paper statements as a practical first step with tangible, measurable results. But paper suppression has not led to a fully digital management lifestyle, as evidenced by the surprisingly high double-dipping rate of the tech-savvy, highly sophisticated group of electronic users known as “moneyhawks.”

These consumers are highly profitable because they buy more banking products and regularly log into online banking, pay bills through their primary financial institution, and use mobile banking. Although more than half of moneyhawks access their checking accounts online, a staggering 40% continue to double dip by receiving both online and paper statements. Clearly there is more that financial institutions and billers can do to move these motivated people along the digital route toward total commitment to digital financial management.

“The key is to deliver a digital experience that doesn’t just match the paper experience—it beats it hands down,” says Mark Schwanhausser, senior analyst, Multichannel Financial Services at Javelin. “That will start with providing consumers with always-on, real-time access through online and mobile devices. From there, the conversion to a digital lifestyle will require increasing transparency, greater customer control, and greater integration—which will lead to unprecedented security and goal fulfillment.”

Jim Van Dyke, president, Javelin says “We are basically at the toddler stage with digital financial management. Financial institutions and billers have an opportunity to break the paradigm and move digital financial management way beyond paper suppression to consumers’ complete and total adoption of a digital financial lifestyle. By leveraging consumers’ digital financial management, financial institutions and billers can increase profitability and customer loyalty and cross-sell other products. We outline the specific steps of Customer-Driven Architecture that financial institutions and billers need to take to be successful.”

 

 

Selected report findings include:

•    Mobile devices are the underpinning technology that will drive always-on and real-time expectations. Javelin’s research indicates an ever-increasing reliance on mobile devices.

•    40% of mobile-device owners will tote a tablet by end of 2012.

•    72% of U.S. adults with mobile devices will tote a smartphone, up from 45% in 2011.

•    More than half of mobile-device owners (111 million) will use mobile banking on an annual basis, up from 30% in 2011.


https://www.javelinstrategy.com/news/1330/92/Javelin-Provides-a-Roadmap-for-Transforming-Consumers-into-Digital-Financial-Managers/d,pressRoomDetail

 

 

[This article was posted on May 21, 2012, on the website of ABA Banking Journal, www.ababj.com.]     

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