ICICI Scores Highest in mobile banking benchmark

Forrester at its Digital Transformation India Forum recently released its 2017 mobile banking benchmark report, which has ICICI Bank receiving the highest overall scores for both functionality and usability.

ICICI has upped the ante with a series of improvements over the past two years. Its cross-channel guidance and extensive transactional features match those of global leaders in these categories.

Forrester evaluated the retail mobile banking services of 7 large retail banks in India: Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, the State Bank of India (SBI), and Yes Bank. This year's evaluation rated the Indian banks on both functionality and usability.

Other key findings of the report include:

• Axis Bank and IndusInd Bank also did well. These two banks have added transactional features and now let customers make P2P payments, add payees without having to register them online first, or pay a bill to a new biller in their mobile apps. Like ICICI Bank, Axis Bank has improved its Indian banks need to improve money management and marketing.

• Usability is another weak point for most Indian mobile banking services. This year's evaluation added usability to the mix, and our usability review found weaknesses in areas like search and navigation, progress and workflow, and error avoidance and recovery. Banks must find and fix usability flaws if they want to deliver great experiences to customers.

• Not always a great user experience. Using Forrester's digital UX review methodology, the benchmark also evaluated the fundamentals of the mobile banking user experience and none of the Indian banks’ apps are really easy to use, although ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Axis Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank provide a better mobile app experience than the others. Indian banking apps need to improve before they can match the experiences provided by their global peers.

"Many of India’s banks have steadily improved the design and functionality of their mobile offerings over the past few years, making mobile apps and sites easier to use, adding transactional features, and building better marketing and sales functionality," writes Ashutosh Sharma, Forrester VP and research director.

"However, digital banking teams need to continue to raise the bar to provide the best mobile banking experience to their customers as they compete with new digital banks such as DBS digibank, and digital wallets such as PhonePe, that offer better digital experiences that not only meet customers’ current needs, but also create new sources of value."

At Digital Transformation India 2017, Forrester also launched another new report focusing on the CX transformation of Big Bazaar, a major India-based retailer which saw its scores in Forrester’s annual Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) rise by the largest year-on-year margin of any brand in the country.