Don’t bother listening in on US Bancorp’s fourth quarter 2012 earnings call if you want to learn about mobile banking adoption or the like.
Today’s call centered on the bank’s decline in charge-offs and nonperforming assets and growth in loans and deposits. Even mortgage servicing fees were discussed in depth. The mobile channel? It was barely mentioned, coming up only in the Q&A in the context of payments. (The transcript is here.)
Now, mortgage servicing fees are very important to a bank’s business, and count more toward the bottom line than the latest wizardry on customers’ smartphone apps.
But US Bank is doing noteworthy things with its smartphone app! US Bank is leading the charge with mobile photo bill pay, soon to launch on its smartphone app. Additionally, US Bank is sending its VP of customer experience, Jim Reynolds, to Bank Innovation 2013, to sit on the challenging Channel Convergence panel. This is forward-thinking stuff.
But from the earnings call, it was just business as usual. Why is US Bank walking the walk, but not talking the talk?
ssshhhh. Silence…….wait for it…. This bettin’ gal thinks they must be sitting (publicly) on something pretty special. Capacity, ability and agility. Gotta crawl, wobble, walk…and then run in the new race. Innovative, integrative thoughts and actions must be practiced/tested before sharing your new talent in the highly competitive speed of thought (and copycat action) world much of the public now skeptically {in}habits.
Or is it perhaps that despite the impressive mobile adoption the bottom line results are not something they want to disclose? Mobile is now just a necessary feature … not dissimilar to BillPay. And we all know how much revenue BillPay generates for Banks & Credit Unions… Real innovation in Mobile will be converting a now commoditized feature into a loyalty driver that generates revenue & ROE.