March 2022 US Market Regional Banks App Performance Snapshot

Video Exec Summary:

Regional Bank Sector = Citizens Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Huntington Bank , KeyBank, M & T Bank, Regions Bank, Santander Bank & TD Bank (North America)

Market Trends (0.57sec)

TD Bank (North America) had some cheque scanning issues in October with thier Engaged Customer Ratings (ECR) dropping to 3.6 but have clearly worked hard on resolving them and are coming back strong in March with their ECR back above 4.

Fifth Third Performance has been jumping around with issues coming and going and in Feb they were actually leading the pack but are now back down below TD Bank and Santander so consistency is needed for them to be seen as segment leaders.

Deeper Dive into Regions Bank App Performance Improvements (2.20sec)

Regions have historically sat with an ECR score of around 3 but from October onwards they have jumped up to an ECR of over 4.

Looking at the operating systems, the customer feedback data driving the overall jump in performance lift we can see is coming from Android users. Regions Bank ECR rating in October for Android users was 2.6 and jumped in Novermber 2021 this jumped to 4.1 so clearly this is an area that users are getting a better experience and is credited to the overarching perormance lift of the Regions Bank App.

Looking at the Android Ipiphany SURF report that analyses feedback to identify pain points around Security & Authentication, User Interface, Reliability and App Features we can quickly see that security issues were a big problem leading up to October 2021 with up to 16.6% of all feedback indicating isues in this area. Since then there has been progressive fixes implemented and in March 2022  this had dropped to 3.5%.

The majority of negative sentiment reported was around sign in issues and inability of people to log into their accounts.

Ranking Based on SURF Performance (5.56sec)

1. TD Bank

2. Fifth Third Bank

3. Regions Bank

4. Santander Bank

5. Citizens Bank

6. M&T Bank

7. KeyBank

8. Huntington Bank

Full Video Transcript:

00:00 Glenn: Welcome everybody to yet another insights session, looking at the US Banking App Market. In this session, we're going to be looking at the Regional Banks in particular. We're going to focus on Regions (Bank). and some great work that they've done since October.

00:22 Tony: Definitely. Here we can see that there's three sets of banks we look at: US National banks, US Tier 1 Banks and US Regional Banks, which we're all looking at today. So it covers, TD bank, North America, KeyBank, Santander, FifthThird regions, Huntington Bank, M&T and Citizens. So, I might just jump straight in.

00:52 Glenn: Go for it.

00:53 Tony: So let's have a look. What we're looking at here is just some market trends. It looks like a bit of spaghetti going on here, but what I'll do, what is focused on a couple looking at the engaged customer rating ECR. This is a measure that is sensitive to real things happening with the app. So if there's a problem, this will detect it very easily and very quickly when we saw that with our our national view of a Wells Fargo, when there was a big collapse in the score and we sold that down to the day when that happened.

In this case, just looking at TD Bank we can see that TD has actually moved along and had some issues in October, but they've picked up again to be really strong in March. And they've obviously yeah, solved a few of the issues and we know what they are from looking elsewhere. It's, there's some, there was some check scanning issues and problems there, and that looks to be resolved in March for them to sort of continue to be above for those that have been historically, but looking at a couple

01:53 Glenn: Quite good market leaders aren't they!

01:54 Tony: They are, they really pushed ahead and they're really consistent within the Canadian market. They're really consistent in here those looks at, it looks to be one issue with resolved that in a couple of months & turned that around.

We also see Fifth Third Bank is jumping around a fair bit, although they did lead the market in February temporarily. But again, that the issues that turn on and off for them now, one of the ones you mentioned up front was regions now.

Regions we're studying historically around a score of three. But they picked up in a dramatic way in November. We can see that pick up here going from about three, up to just below four.

So, well obviously well above three and a half. So what's happened there. Let's jump in and have a look. So one of the key things we can see here is that. This is looking at Android versus iOS. If I just, if I just focus on Android, we can see that the Android score is the one that's picked up. And because with, as with most banks, Android is dominant in terms of usage.

We see that that movement, there is the thing that's caused that change. If I look at just iOS and its own, it's remained fairly flat, does jump around a little bit, but it's fairly flat across the board there so it's Androids caused the, that jump up, which is great that fixed something in there. Let's stick with Android.

And then let's also stick with, with regions and have a look at this particular view here. So what I'll do, I'll just step away from this right panel here so we can see what's going on. What I'm showing you now is what's called a surf analysis. So it's around Security and Authentication, User Interface, Reliability and Features, and this is pain points.

So the lower is better. So just be clear on that when it gets high, it means you've got more problems in each of these areas. So one of the things looking at here is we can see that in that period pre that regions movement. And I just make sure we're clear here, who we're speaking with about this is Regions and Android so, because that's the key movement we've seen into October.

There are some big issues around security and they seem to have been fixed in November and then continuously that's remained the same.  There's probably some attempted fixes leadig up to October and that hasn't worked.

We can see there across six months into October, like, you know, another one in five people are talking about log-in problems in October. So that's a big issue.

It looks though as of November mid November update, that's retained itself across time. So very positive for Regions. Let's have a step in here and have a look at a bit of detail. So this is the same thing we're looking at. And what we can see here is this is looking at down, down to detailed topics on the left here. So "I'm unable to log in",  a very specific thing had around 12% of the negative sentiment and is now down under 3%.

So four times lower than it was previously. That's the main thing has happened. They fixed those log-in issues across time.

If you look on the right here, this is looking at some October feedback. Around logging into the app. So people just not being able to sign in and log in, just directly they can't get in there they're trying to sign in and they can't, which must be very frustrating, which is why you're getting around one in five customers talking about it as an issue. So it's great.

They've actually fixed that and, and it looks like one of the great things about it. It's a, it's a long-term, fix. So it's across time. They've done that for the past six months now, which is brilliant.

One other thing I wanted to talk about was, was having a look at the impact of these fixes and not fixing something.

If I have a look at, at these US Regional Banks surf pillars in March - What we see here for Regions it's looking at around 20% of feedback is negative sentiment. We can see for example, security and login issues at 4.7%. But that's a lot lower than the others, like M&T And Huntington, for example. So they're doing pretty well. It looks at it going in the right direction. The leaders in this market, FifthThird, and TD bank, they're doing pretty well.

Like you can see there, the levels that they're at, at around 3% login issue. So essentially they're, they're non-existent to some extent,

One of the things we do see though with the top tier banks Citibank, Citibank's a good example. They normally sit at around 10% in total for negative sentiment, and you can see none of these actually hit that level, but they are pretty close, like the likes of TD and Fifth Third are getting close, but they're not at that level just yet. And the thing with Citibank for example, is consistency across time. So none of that sort of having a problem and trying to fix it. So it's always consistently at that high levels. The high level. So the good news, yeah, this time round is that if I go back to my original one is that regions has done a great job in picking, the security issues up, from October.
So November is that sort of peak and they've retained that for at least six months.

07:11 Glenn: Yeah. Fantastic insights there. And it just goes to show when you focus on the areas that can have the biggest impact. How much of an impact it can have to the overall and overarching, not just score and it's all great to get the kudos and around the rankings, but the user experience.

And when you're getting the user experience, once they're doing it's impacting retention churn rates and I'm helping you acquire more customers. So thanks for the insights, my friend, and look forward to catching up with you again soon, where we are going to be looking at the Tier 1 Banks.

07:49 Tony: Brilliant. Thanks Glenn.