Consumer Perceptions of Online Banking Reveal the Pros and Cons of Convenience

As we already uncovered in a recent blog, digital banking is having a moment. The speed and convenience of accessing your account and performing basic functions like transfers and payments is hard to beat, and retail banking institutions are eager to expand on the offerings many already have. But in order to gain consumer insights into how best to optimize growth and adapt to user needs, banks need to explore existing perceptions surrounding brick-and-mortar as well as digital banking services—and particularly, how those attitudes span generational divides.

The Research

In order to facilitate such exploration, we decided to find out what consumers’ current behaviors and drivers are as they pertain to more advanced digital banking services. So we launched an Agile Attitudes & UsageTM* (A&U) study to explore openness to advanced services, triggers and barriers to adoption, and experiences using mobile payment systems. Our quantitative research was guided by the following hypotheses:

1. Younger people are more likely to utilize advanced services digitally, as they have been raised in a digital world
2. Non-Millennials (35-55) will be hesitant to make the jump to digital banking due in part to concerns about security

The Results

According to our respondents, digital banking is about as common as we hypothesized, with 98% of respondents having used some form of digital banking in the past 24 months. Both Millennials and non-Millennials use it mostly for monitoring the status of checking, savings, and credit card accounts, and both cited its convenience as the most appealing factor. Non-Millennials were particularly drawn to the convenience of banking on their own time and avoiding lines, while Millennials were more appreciative of the easy organization that comes with electronic paperwork.

Where the results differed slightly from our prediction was in the realm of online security. Risk of fraud and hacking proved as much of a concern for Millennials as it did for non-Millennials, with the former also lamenting that digital services usually lack personalized recommendations and information on other banking products.

Overall, both Millennials and non-Millennials are interested in expanding their digital banking accounts and activities, but banks should further investigate what is already working as well as what concerns still need to be addressed in order to encourage widespread adoption. Check out the full report below to learn further implications for digital banking product innovation, including

• Which advanced digital services more than 70% of all respondents found desirable
• The online banking activities Millennials and non-Millennials perform most and least
• Key attributes desired in more advanced digital banking services
• Which mobile payment services are used most by Millennials and non-Millennials

*An Agile A&U is an online quantitative study used to explore consumer attitudes, usages, habits, practices, and behaviors. Survey clicks are balanced to population level data on age, gender, and region to ensure a natural fallout of the sample.