Citi has hit back at claims its mobile banking
service has fallen behind those of its rivals – and is planning a
series of aggressive m-banking product launches in the coming
months.
Citi head of mobile Liza Landsman’s
resignation last month was seen as another setback to its m-banking
service, which has suffered from low usage numbers and technical
problems since launch in 2007.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Landsman, who is leaving Citi to
work at an as-yet unnamed private equity company, told EPI
that despite the setbacks, recent surveys showed the bank had one
of the best m-banking services.
“When [consultancy] Javelin looked
at banks by breadth of mobile functionality, they ranked us first
last year and second this year,” Landsman said.
Citi is still yet to announce a
replacement for Landsman but is planning aggressive m-banking
campaign in the upcoming months. The bank will introduce Android
and 3G m-banking by the end of the year. It will also roll out
InControl, a service which alerts customers via text when
transactions are made on their accounts. It will be available to
its credit card customers later this year and will be introduced to
debit card customers the following year.
The first indication that Citi’s
m-banking was struggling came when EPI’s sister
publication Retail Banker International reported that the
bank had only managed to attract 20,000 subscribers to its
CitiMobile service in its first year. That was compared to rival
Bank of America (BofA), which had signed up 1m users in the same
period.
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By GlobalDataAn RBI survey, conducted
in conjunction with e-payments consultancy firm Crone Consulting,
showed Citi languishing in fifth place behind BofA, Wells Fargo and
Wachovia. It was only downhill from there. While BofA recently
announced that it had reached 5m m-banking users, and currently
sits second in Apple’s top 10 finance app chart, Citi doesn’t
feature at all.
Last month, The Wall
Street Journal revealed a security flaw was found on Citi’s
iPhone app, which saved personal account information in a hidden
file on users’ handsets, impacting the security of around 117,600
of its customers.
M-banking specialist Richard Crone,
co-founder of Crone Consulting, said Citi has been hurt by its
earlier mistakes of treating mobile banking as an isolated
channel.
“Mobile banking is more than one
channel, it is 16 channels that require active cross-channel
integration and management sponsorship from the CEO,” said
Crone.
“Yet the bank is siloed and has
separate channel management. This is the challenge that I think
Liza [Landsman] was facing.”
Crone said every figure in charge
of mobile banking faces these challenges today, but acknowledged
the issues do seem to be more prevalent in Citi.
“[Citi] needs to stop looking at
mobile banking as a separate entity like they did under Liza,” he
added.
“It is not too late for Citi to get
into the mobile payments game, providing it gets its act together
within the next 12-18 months.
“It will then be in a position to fight the good fight to
prevent the loss of the next wave of mobile banking customers.”
