Latinia, via Francesc Perez, business manager of the Spanish software vendor who is in Miami now participating in the 2nd edition of Mobile Commerce Americas, underlined today in his track “SMS Banking: the shortest path with the longest route”, the nature of “competitive need and no longer competitive advantage” of mobility in the multi-channel strategy of any financial institution. Mobile Commerce Americas is the sector’s main event devoted to analyzing the perspectives and opportunities within the sphere of mobile financial services, methods of payment and mobile commerce, concentrating on the industry’s main agents during these few days in Miami, Florida.
“The multi-channel strategy no longer accounts for or is limited to Internet banking. Mobility has ceased to be something exotic. Maintaining the SMS channel has, after two years, investment and expense costs that are comparatively similar to two visits per year by a customer to a branch. This is fewer than 10 dollars, and the relational possibilities of cross selling, not to mention making that customer loyal, are astronomically greater”, proclaimed Pérez.
“We propose to the financial institutions to migrate customers to channels with a lower cost like cell phones and that focus their most valuable resources – human beings – on tasks that yield a higher profit for the institution. A bank with 250,000 recurring mobile banking customers can, by the third year, be yielding cost savings greater than one million dollars after having migrated customers from the more costly channels such as the office, ATM’s or telephone banking to the cellular channel whose costs per contact do not exceed USD 0.10, versus USD 0.85 for an automatic teller transaction, USD 3.75 for that same transaction with the call center or 4 dollars for a visit to the office, proclaimed Pérez.
The principal executive of the Spanish company in Latin America has also gone over the latest data concerning mobility penetration at Latin American financial institutions, stressing “its firm progress, as since the first study led by the Spanish company in 2007, they have gone from 38% to 51% of the presence at the top 125 banks on the continent with clear mobile messaging leadership”.
