Bogota, July 13th 2016.- “Having technically reached the ceiling in terms of the mobile banking offer in Latin America, Banks need to explore new relationship and communication channels with their customers. Social networks, particularly platforms and messaging tools, seem perfectly positioned for a new wave of digitization of financial services, “said Oriol Ros, marketing manager at Latinia, quoting the latest ‘Mobile Banking and Social Networks in Latin America’ 8th edition report.
The study was carried out among the top 100 financial institutions – commercial banking – in the region, preserving national quotas for the inclusion of all the continent’s economies. It reveals “a peak” regarding the mobilization of mobile service offering, with 99 entities that have up to 3 media services, when in 2012 only 77% of the banks were mobilized and they had on average just 2. “In five years there has been a growth both in the number of banks and the total amount of mobile services, triggering exponential growth”, said Ros. Apps have finally overtaken SMS Banking, although both still remain reasonably on par, and caused significant collateral movements such as the surge in push notifications, increasingly present among financial institutions.
“There is a need to go further, and social platforms also analysed in the study may provide the answer, given the level of involvement shown by users of social networks with banks in the region. That engagement, measured from their “likes”, shares, mentions or comments activity, expresses a clear demand, a desire to connect to their entities through that channel as a natural form of interaction that banks should not ignore. This has given rise to movements like those of Facebook and #chatbots, aware that the bank’s customer feels particularly comfortable in their platform and with their tools,” concluded Ros in the report preview.
