Brief:

• BBVA Compass, a U.S. banking franchise run by Spanish financial giant BBVA, updated its mobile app to give customers money management tools that have been available at its website, per a statement. The update helps to track spending habits, monthly budgets and external accounts from brokerages, credit cards, insurers and other banks.
• BBVA Compass in the past six months also added features to help customers activate, disable or request a new debit or credit card, apply for some kinds of loans, transfer money, pay bills, set up alerts and request balance transfers from credit cards issued by other banks, among other functions.
• Alex Carriles, BBVA Compass’s head of online and mobile banking, said the bank added the features in response to customer requests for software tools to help manage their money. Fintech startup MX helped BBVA Compass to develop the mobile app’s data analysis features.

Insight:

As BBVA Compass demonstrates, banks are adding features to their mobile apps to provide more convenience for customers, especially younger adults who are more comfortable using smartphones to make payments and manage their money. In addition, banks are giving customers more value-added resources as they face greater competition from nimble fintech startups that have developed technology to automate many money-management functions. But banks also are partnering with fintech startups to add features to their mobile banking apps, as BBVA’s collaboration with data aggregator MX shows.

Bank and credit card apps are winning over customers with their mobile apps, according to researcher J.D. Power. The firm found that mobile apps helped banks this year achieve the highest customer satisfaction rating of any industry it measures. Retail banking mobile apps boosted their overall customer satisfaction to 867 on a 1,000-point scale, up 12 points from 2017. Credit card mobile apps increased their overall score by points to 874. Smartphones have become key way to interact with customers, with 43% of bank customers using a mobile app in the past three months, per J.D. Power.

The researcher found that the more people use mobile apps, the more their satisfaction rises. Customer satisfaction is higher among customers who utilize their apps 12 or more times a month than for those who use mobile banking three or fewer times a month, its survey found. The best banking apps combine functionality and performance, including features such as multiple security login options, built-in chat functionality and user-friendly account management tools, per J.D. Power. For a bank like BBVA Compass, improving mobile app features is key to maintaining strong relationships with customers.