Ding! Bank text message use still growing

Almost nine out of ten financial services organizations believe SMS—or mobile messaging—has a considerable or major impact on customer service, and 73% consider it to be very effective for employee-focused emergency alerts, according to a study by OpenMarket and International Data Corp.

In this highly regulated industry where breaches can occur, financial services organizations are on high alert and are seeking the safest channels for communication. Mobile messaging is secure and scalable.

With critical capabilities such as two-factor authentication for fraud detection, the technology is being rapidly adopted industry-wide. According to the research, the top customer-facing use cases for SMS include timely offers and notifications regarding high-risk, high-dollar transactions, as 30% of these businesses use secure SMS messaging to gain deeper customer insights and to meet industry compliance requirements, respectively.

Internally, financial services organizations use mobile messaging as a key component for employee communication and contingency planning to improve internal security and facilitate secure employee notifications. Business leaders are also driving new investments in mobile messaging and are closely involved in solution, specification, selection, and deployment to ensure technologies are meeting the standards the industry.

“These findings revealed that the financial services industry has one of the greatest demands for mobile messaging capabilities and that these businesses are taking a long-term, purpose-led approach to their mobile messaging investment,” says Marc DeCastro, research director, Consumer Banking, IDC Insights.

The IDC study highlights other key ways financial services companies are using mobile messaging today:

• More than 50% of organizations use mobile messaging to differentiate or improve the customer experience.
• 35% use the technology to attract and retain new customers.
• More than 25% use it to improve the business’ risk mitigation.
• More than 20% of these businesses use it to ensure business continuity and to enhance multichannel delivery capacity,
• Only 15% use mobile messaging to improve their organization’s security.