2011 Online Financial Services review
Mapa review the changes monitored during the year; some key trends emerge
03 January 2012 | Mobile & SMS Social Tablets | Mark Pavan
Throughout the year Mapa researchers have been busy updating online competitor intelligence dashboards, and posting stories about the changes encountered. These dashboards cover a broad spectrum of the Financial Services market including banking, credit cards, general insurance, loans, mobile, mortgages, PMI, savings, sharedealing and SMS. The accounts monitored are drawn from all corners of the globe.
Looking at stories behind the headlines, a number of change clusters stand out as being areas of “hyper activity”, compared to the rest. We have picked out four clusters in particular:
- Mobile: the most active change area by far, with changes ranging from simple enhancements to web sites through to full on iPad apps. Every provider we monitor seemed to do something, sometime, somewhere during the year.
- Social Media: also very active: intriguingly, each sector seems to have had a small number of players who have stood out as being more active and adventurous when compared to the mainstream. First Direct and Amex are two that spring to mind; or again Danske in Scandinavia, and AXA PPP in the PMI sector.
- Videos: month by month, little by little, but across all sectors, videos have been added to websites. From a consumer perspective these have certainly enhanced the customer experience.
- PFM tools: although not such a high incidence on the dashboards, our PFM report was by far our most sought out insight report during the year even trumping our popular Tablets series!
What does 2012 hold?
Whilst it is likely that it will be more of the same in 2012, we are putting our money on more:
Tablet computing initiatives
Consistent marketing across all channels
Mobile payments (NFC) and social payments
Multi-channel user experience (browser, mobile, SMS, tablet, TV, etc.)
We say, bring it on!