US consumers prefer online banking - ABA survey

Most US bank customers prefer to do their banking online compared to any other method, according to an annual survey of 1000 consumers conducted by the American bankers Association which finds the Web channel gaining in popularity year on year.

Thrity six percent of this year's consumer sample voted in favour of Web banking, compared to 25% last year.

Nessa Feddis, ABA vice president, senior counsel and retail banking expert, says: "Online banking is the future of banking as more Generation Y-ers enter the marketplace. This means the industry will need to continue investing in technology that supports online banking because consumers see it as quick, convenient, accurate and safe."

Survey results showed that the popularity of online banking was not exclusive to the youngest consumers: it was the preferred banking method for all bank customers under the age of 55. Consumers over 55 still prefer to visit their local branch (33%). Online banking for this age group was the second favourite way to conduct banking transactions (20%).

Among all consumers, the preference for online banking was followed by visiting branches (25%), and using ATMs (15%). The use of mobile banking (cell phones, PDAs, etc.) was preferred by three percent of consumers, primarily among 18 to 34 year olds. The popularity of ATMs was down in all age groups.

Related Companies

American Bankers Association (ABA)

Channels

Retail banking

Keywords

Automated teller machines and network services

Comments: (2)

A Finextra member 01 October, 2010, 18:42

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The headline above is erroneous by a factor of 10x.

The ABA survey was from a sample of just over 1,010 (not 10,000). As the founder of a company that routinely surveys samples of 5,000, I can safely tell you that this makes a difference in standard errors as well as the ability to further segment results by specific types of audiences, product users, and customers of one bank versus another's.

My information comes from the ABA website.

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A Finextra member 04 October, 2010, 14:47

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With the popularity of online banking on the rise with both consumers and businesses, so is the risk for greater banking fraud. That's why it's imperative for banks to constantly evolve and update their fraud prevention and detection systems for all online banking accounts.

Banks can mitigate online banking threats by taking a layered approach to online banking fraud monitoring. Analyzing all together the login event, the outgoing transaction and the sequences of events relative to usual customer behavior is a strong predictor of criminal intent patterns. Through this event monitoring and customer behavior profiling, high-risk activity can be detected, and action can be taken in real-time or near real-time to stop the transfer of funds from the account or to contact the customer to confirm that the transaction is genuine, and thus avoiding any loss to the bank or consumer.

But real-time protection is only one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is to approach fraud detection and protection as a customer relations strategy; one which improves account holder security throughout the banking operation. The benefits of building an enterprise platform on top of what may begin as a stand-alone debit card fraud program are many.

For example, when a bank's systems look across broader bank-customer channels it may uncover suspicious activity that would have appeared normal if viewed independently. There are many cross-channel fraud scenarios that fraudsters use to target banks. Such connections can be easily missed when each function has its own specific approach and methodology to fraud. But to get to the level where a bank can effectively detect suspicious cross-channel activity requires an underlying platform that has the flexibility to understand card, internet banking, wire, ACH and other data sets, both financial and non-financial across all channels.

The speed and cunning of online banking fraud demands a real-time, 360-degree response.