July 2022 US Regional Banks App Performance Snapshot

TD Bank has held a great lead with Fifth Third Bank remaining in second place for some time now. In this month’s US Regionals banking app snapshot we investigate the gap between these two players, and identify what Fifth Third Bank needs to do to take the first place position.

Catch me if you can. Why can’t Fifth Third Bank catch up to TD Bank?

In the US Regionals segment, we’ve seen TD Bank enjoy a decent lead for more than six months now with Fifth Third Bank always trailing behind second place. This has been going on pretty consistently for a few months now, so this month, we turn our attention to this gap between the top 2, to find out what Fifth Third Bank can do to close the gap.

Because we are at the top of the leaderboard, we are at the pointy end of things so it’s the little details that matter. Our first place to begin the investigation is to compare the two banks' overall distribution of the customer scores, using a range of 1- 5, with 5 being the best score.

Tony brings our attention to the 5 scores as this is where we see the greatest differences between the two banks. TD Bank has 68.2% of their customers scoring them a 5, compared with Fifth Third Bank with only 56.6% of their customers scoring them a 5. We learn that these customers are instead scoring Fifth Third Bank more 4’s and 3’s. This is the crucial area identified by Tony as being where the gap between the two exists. The challenge for Fifth Third Bank is to move those 3’s and 4’s into 5’s if they want to close the gap and take first place.

In the snapshot we look at various recommendations for Fifth Third Bank to look at, in specific areas within the customer journey where they will be able to make small gains to help to lift their customer’s experience. As these are all the typical things a customer would expect to be able to do in the app, it makes sense for Fifth Third Bank to give these the attention they deserve.

It is here that Tony uncovers a very poor performance area for both banks. Watch the video to find out where the weak points are.

Despite being top of the leader board there is room to improve for TD Bank too. However, if Fifth Third Bank doesn't wake up to some of their functionality and reliability issues to catch up and try to close the gap, we might see a very different picture in coming months.

Tell us what you think - Can Fifth Third Bank close the gap? Will TD Bank address these issues in time to hold on to first place? And If you would like a personalised look at your bank's app performance? Contact Touchpoint Group today for a specific insights session for your business.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Glenn: Welcome back to another Video Insight Session for the world of Banking Apps and this month we are looking at the US Regionals and in particular, we're going to be looking at why can't Fifth Third catch TD at the top of the tree in the Regional Banking App sector. And again, it's the little things that make a big difference. Isn't, it Tony Patrick?

00:00:23 Tony: It definitely is. Thanks Glenn. Yes, today as Glenn mentioned, we're covering up US Regionals. So, looking at TD Bank, Regions, Fifth Third, Citizens, KeyBank and Huntington. But, as you mentioned, Glenn, the focus is on TD Bank and Fifth Third because you know TD is having a nice lead over the past six months and longer and Fifth Third seems to be always second place there. Let's jump in as we usually do and just have a look at what those scores are doing across time.

I'll have a look at a couple here in particular, I'm just looking at one we can see there at the bottom there, which is Huntington, which had a low point at below 2 on average but, it has really picked up in that past month. I haven't gotten to there's no detail in this around that but again, that's something we can actually explore and understand exactly what happened as to why Huntington improved. Another one there, which is probably worth a session, probably next month is having a look at Regions, which has moved from competing with the top players up at around 3.6 and now in July after a couple of drops over a few months is now sitting at 2.3. So, clearly some problems there that need to be fixed for Regions.

But, the focus today as we mentioned is looking at you know, why is TD now over the past four or five months consistently ahead of Fifth Third and you can see the gap there is reasonably wide, at the most recent month is actually closer. But, what we can do is have a look at why that gap has been like it was over those past few months. Let's have a look at what we can see in terms of the scores. So, one of the things we can see here is that on the right we can see that those giving a 1 so, 19% of TD customers give a one when they give their feedback as compared to 22% of Fifth Third that's not much of a difference it's only about 3% of a difference but, of course it makes the overall difference on the score but, it's not a major thing, you're going to worry about. Of course, you want to get both of those down but, of course it's that's what we're doing is comparing these two together. What I can see though, is those giving a 5 for TD is 68 % as compared to 56 % for Fifth Third. So, that's where Fifth Third is losing things it hasn't quite reached that peak of getting those fives coming through from customers and they tend to be dropping down into the fours and the threes and so that's the major thing here, is just getting those fours and threes up into fives will make the biggest difference.

But, let's have a look at first of all, the Journeys. Let's go straight into Journeys and look at the scores for each of these. Now, TD is sitting there in blue and we can see there the very first one for example, in Check Deposits, we can see they're at 3.4. It's well above the Fifth Third of 2.9. Well, it's well above but, it's not a major gap but again, it's a few of these things across the board that make the difference. I can also see across there that even things like Checking Account Balance, which is 2.9 for Fifth Third compared to TD at 3.3. One of the things for both of these banks is this whole area, this Journey about Open App and Authenticating and Getting into the App is underperforming. They need to do, both need to do better there even though Fifth Third is leading, they're both down in that space there. What I'll do though, is have a look at this Check Deposit piece because it's interesting to see what a customer's saying about Fifth Third and about TD.

Let's jump into Check Deposits and get some examples of what's coming through. One of the examples this is looking at Fifth Third again, their score is lower the average score is 2.9 for this particular topic when people talk about it and what we're seeing here , basically, "I'm not able to deposit checks most of the time which is aggravating..." "It took 15 separate tries..." So, for some people it's working and others it isn't. What we can do here for example, is have a look at maybe is there some way for us to have a look and see which particular operating system or a version of the app we might want to look at so we can have a look at this on the right panel and see across the board. A few of these are Android but of course, a lot more Android feedback does come through because of the usage rates. But again, the app even crashes for some people just not the fact that it doesn't work but, the whole app crashes and doing that process. So, not good.

Let's compare that directly to TD. What's the experience there? That will come up on the right here. Now again, we're seeing problems. Their average score is 3.4 which is well below their actual score overall. So you see there's still problems but, they are actually leading in this space compared to Fifth Third. Both of these apps need to improve but, Fifth Third needs to improve more in that sense.

I want to have a quick look here as well into something which you think would be very basic, is Checking your Account Balance. Let's see how Fifth Third is actually doing there. If we're going to that space there what I can see is in this case... Let's have a look at this in here... "There's something about it maxes out your balance... it takes a long time log in... no balance showing..." So, various issues with balances whether it's sort of not the right balance or they can't even see their balance and this person's here had a great experience actually see their balance when they should log in. So, obviously some improvement there can be made but, across both banks there's improvement to be made because TD isn't actually smashing that either.

Let's jump into another area which is important, which is looking at the Foundational Areas. Things like: Basic Usability, The Speed Reliability, Functional Suitability. So, that's an area where does the app is a feature actually working as expected in here and app security for example. Now, one of the things I can see here is that is TD clearly leading on Usability and Speed but, Reliability for both is pretty low at 2.1 and 2.6 respectively. Fifth Third is leading but, there's a massive problem for both of them. TD still has room to move beyond what it currently is... let's have a look at the reliability for TD because that's obviously your concern if the app is not reliable then it doesn't matter how good your Journeys and Features are, you can't get to them. So, let's jump in and see what types of commentary are getting through from TD. This is sort of some things where they can improve.

So again, there's some areas around that Mobile Deposit is actually coming through. That is one of the areas where they're having an issue is the check deposit area and again, here we can see things like, if I go to the long version of this to see all the comment we can get a bit of detail, "latest install crashes whatever attempt to scan a Scanner Check..." A lot of check scanning issues are coming through and reflect being reflected in that reliability problem. But, what I can see here, maybe there's another area here which is looking at the Usability issue. Let's have a look at what comes through for Fifth Third and see how they're performing compared to TD.

So, we see a few good things coming through you know, again, Check Deposit is a real problem across the board, if that doesn't go right, it actually causes the app to crash in a few places. This one here "Sometimes the mobile app is down at the most convenient times..." I'd imagine this. They mean inconvenient but again, it's a problem for people when the app is down. "I can't set up auto pay..." This person here is talking about Difficulty. Actually they haven't described exactly but, it's a very difficult thing to use for that person. If we compare that directly to what TD is having, we'll end up seeing a lot more green in this area and as we can see it is a lot greener because they're actually doing really well at 4.6 out of 5 for Usability. There's a couple of little problems they can fix but again, this is a real strength for TD around that whole Usability problem their sort of UI processes is working very well. So, that's the summary for me and I think both of these apps can pick their act up but, they both need to improve on Reliability and each area even though TD is leading they've still got a lot of room to improve to even get make that gap bigger.

00:09:11 Glenn: Yeah, very good point there, Tony. Especially it's easy enough to look across the fence at the neighbour and say we're doing all right when you're playing in the same field and I think the really pertinent step for me today that's stood out in some of the other sessions that we've been doing is TD Bank leading this market segment with 69% of those customer scores coming through at fives versus market leaders like US Bank where it's up in the vicinity of the high 80s, 83% and 89% and so, if you want to really make some big improvements, look up don't, look across.

That's it from us, folks. And we will see you next month with another Insight Session.