Javelin Strategy & Research Blog

iPhone users are now revolutionizing the volume by which consumers manage their finances over mobile devices, and in the future we predict they’ll revolutionize the very *way* consumers manage their finances. The data on changing consumer mobile banking offerings and usage patterns is pretty clear on this, as laid out in Mark Schwanhausser’s latest report: even when compared to all other smartphone users (a growing population), iPhone users are one-and-a-half times as likely to be using their mobile device to be logging into bank accounts. Just wait till all those downloadable apps integrate with the inner workings of people’s bank accounts accounts…we’ve only begun to see how always-on, real-time finance will affect everyday human behavior via the small screen. What’s really fascinating to me is how the future of what I call “interactive predictive analytics”, of which we only find examples in the mobile music world today. Predictive analytics is used widely for “back end” capabilties today by companies such as Experian, Equifax, Transunion, EMC/RSA, Fair Isaac, Fiserv and a host of others, but in the future customers will be able to set the preferences that determine loan products, cross-channel offers, and certainly the way all that financial content is laid out on the small screen. The Customer Driven Architecture will be the foundation on which consumers will use mobile devices to remotely control so many aspects of their personal finances, and the change will be felt at all layers of the “architecture stack”…and this in turn will affect what banks buy from platform companies such as Oracle, SAS, Microsoft, Cisco and so many others. We haven’t even begun to imagine how always-on, real-time financial access will lead to the benefits of safety and goal-fulfillment, and the changes will be profound. For now, bankers and vendors must focus on short-term action steps that increase customer acquisition, cross-sell, loyalty and profitability while planning underlying system architecture changes that will revolutionize customer relationships over the five-15 year window. This will be a fun.