While multichannel investment is important for banks in Europe and the United States, mobile banking trails bricks-and-mortar branches, the Internet, ATMs and call centers on their list of priorities.

Celent recently reviewed an Oliver Wyman report on multichannel banking among large European banks that includes the results of a survey of 30 European retail banks from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain.

Taking note of relative channel priorities among survey participants, Bob Meara, Atlanta-based senior analyst at Celent, was compelled to compare those with stated priorities among U.S. banks surveyed in July as part of a Celent research effort aimed at understanding the current and future state of branch infrastructure leading to a report published in August.

The Celent survey gathered responses from 187 financial institutions.

Among them were 33 banks in the $50 billion-plus asset tier.

The graph below compares stated channel priorities between the European and U.S. banks with assets in excess of $50 billion. It shows the percentage of respondents rating each channel as No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 in spending priority.

Source: separate Oliver Wyman and Celent surveys

In both regions:

• Multichannel investment is a high priority.

• Branch channel remains the highest priority, closely followed by the Internet channel. Interestingly, branch channel priorities are nearly identical across the two regions.

• Mobile banking is the lowest-priority channel.

However, there are several significant differences between Europe and the U.S.

“Specifically, the ATM channel is a much higher priority among large European banks than it is among the U.S. sample,” Mr. Meara said in a blog post.

“Fifty percent of the E.U. banks rated the ATM channel No. 1 or No. 2 in priority compared to just 19 percent among large U.S. banks,” he said.

“The mobile channel is a comparatively low priority among E.U. banks, with 17 percent placing mobile banking among the top-two priorities versus 26 percent among large U.S. banks.”

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Commerce Daily