Digital Divide Among Banks' Online Banking Services Showcases Opportunities for Greater Parity; Timely, Predictive Alerts Needed for Improved Financial Management

Bank of America Continues to Score First Overall in Keynova Group's Q4 2024 Online Banker Scorecard

WILMINGTON, Del., Nov. 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Keynova Group, the principal competitive intelligence source for digital financial services firms, today announced the results of its semi-annual Online Banker Scorecard for Q4 2024. Bank of America again won first place with the highest overall score for its desktop user experience in Keynova Group's competitive evaluation of 18 leading U.S. retail banks.

The Scorecard revealed a divide among the online offerings of the larger national and regional banks compared to the smaller, regional banks, indicating opportunities for the latter to improve the online customer experience. The report also highlights timely account alerts for account balances and transactions as an area in which all banks can enhance their offerings.

"While we are seeing progress toward digital banking services that improve the ability of consumers to better manage their finances, disparity remains in the online banking services among smaller, regional banks and presents an opportunity for these banks to step up their digital services to be more competitive," said Susan Foulds, managing director, Keynova Group. "Real-time alerts are critical to helping customers stay on top of their accounts and finances, making the delivery of accurate and timely alerts a priority."

Key Findings:

Digital Divide Among Banks in Online Banking
Vast differences among the top third and bottom third of Scorecard banks based on their Overall Scores showcase areas of opportunity for smaller banks in the lower scoring tier. In payments and transfers, all of the top third of banks expedite ACH inter-institution A2A transfers for next day delivery and have recurring payments listed on the payments screen to show the next payment date and amount. Comparatively, less than 20% of the bottom third of banks support A2A transfers or prominently display scheduled recurring payments—a key best practice. Among the banks' services and educational offerings, customers can set and monitor financial goals, such as saving for a vacation or a new car, at all of the top scoring banks, or receive alerts in advance of a CD maturity and renewal at 83% of the top ranked banks. However, only 33% of the lower ranking banks offer these account and money management tools.

There is relatively more parity among banks for customer-facing privacy and security measures: 83% of banks in the top third and 50% in the bottom third enable users to manage third-party apps or websites that access customers' account information. However, across the board, banks lack some key digital capabilities as only 28% enable debit card lock and unlock for specific types of transactions, less than 20% provide advanced virtual assistants for desktop online banking, and just 11% state the availability of online customer support, e.g., live chat or messaging, in another language.

Timely Alerts are Key for Consumers' Effective Money Management
Banks can improve the digital experience with personalized and predictive notifications to help customers track and manage their finances. Currently, only half of the Scorecard banks send low balance alerts in real-time and some fail to send low or negative balance alerts until the day after the transaction has occurred—risking an overdraft or unpaid bill event. As account security is a continued concern, more than half (61%) of banks send automatic real-time alerts when suspicious activity is detected. Predictive alerts are also increasingly desired by consumers. A notification that a series of recurring payments scheduled by a customer is about to expire is sent by two-thirds of the banks, yet only a slim 28% of banks send a predictive alert when the account balance may be too low to fund an upcoming scheduled payment.

About the Online Banker Scorecard
Keynova Group's semi-annual, fact-based Online Banker Scorecard, offered for more than two decades, evaluates digital user capabilities, customer experience elements, and best practices to identify evolving trends and insights that drive online strategy in banking. The evaluation encompasses the websites of Bank of America, BMO, Capital One, Chase, Citibank, Citizens Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Huntington Bank, KeyBank, M&T Bank, PNC, Regions Bank, Santander, TD Bank, Truist, USAA, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. A separate semi-annual Mobile Banker Scorecard reviews the mobile app and mobile web experience. For more information please visit: https://www.keynovagroup.com/scorecards/#banking

About Keynova Group
Keynova Group is the nation's foremost competitive intelligence firm providing trusted benchmarking insights and analysis of consumer and small business digital financial services, including banking, credit card, home lending and insurance. Since 1999, Keynova Group's Scorecards have served as the go-to source for leading financial services firms to obtain reliable competitive intelligence and actionable insights. The firm's proven methodology and highly detailed results help its clients maximize the value of their digital channels to deliver a premier experience to customers and prospects.

SOURCE Keynova Group