L2 Index Ranks Digital Winners & Losers in the Financial Services Industry

NEW YORK, Nov. 29, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital benchmarking firm L2 Inc. releases the Digital IQ Index^®: Financial Services 2016.

The Index benchmarks and ranks the digital performance of 70 Financial Services brands operating in the US market, with a specific focus on Insurance and Wealth Management offerings. The Digital IQ Index® methodology evaluates brands' performance across consumer touch-points (Brand Site, Digital Marketing, Social Media, and Mobile), and classifies each brand as "Genius," "Gifted," "Average," "Challenged," or "Feeble." The report provides data-driven analysis and insights into digital trends and best practices among the US's largest Financial Services firms, as well as tools for brands to diagnose digital strengths and weaknesses relative to their peers.

"By disrupting traditional models, new Fintech start-ups have demonstrated that digital products and services—from payments to insurance to investment advice—create new value for consumers. Meanwhile, established providers have struggled to maintain calcified business lines, prioritizing regulatory compliance and cost-cutting measures," said Ken Allard, CEO at L2 and author of the Financial Services report. "In an attempt to stay relevant to millennials and meet rapidly evolving consumer expectations around speed, value, and transparency, Financial Services firms are racing to transform their antiquated products, services, and customer relationships."

Key findings from L2's report include:

• The sole "Genius" in the Index, Bank of America snagged the #1 spot, partially thanks to their pioneering marketing campaigns that live on millennial friendly platforms frequently overlooked by their immediate peers.
• Most brands utilize supplemental tools such as Knowledge Centers (77%) and Diagnostic Tools/Calculators (60%) to engage prospects, yet 44% (nearly half) don't establish what the next step is—leaving the onus of outreach on the customer and abandoning them prematurely at key conversion points.
• Only 16% of Index brands rank among the top ten most-visible destinations on search engines for applicable, non-branded keywords (e.g. "retirement"), undercutting return on investment in SEO/SEM.
• Twitter is the social media platform of choice for Index brands, with an adoption of 96%. Although growth on the platform has stagnated, Financial Services brands continue to over-post on Twitter despite receiving only a sliver of engagement (five percent) compared to other social platforms.
• Ninety percent of Index brands have mobile-responsive sites, but the majority of brands lag in most features expected by mobile users. While 50% of brands enable direct links to client logins from mobile search results, more than a third of these instances lead to pages that are not optimized for mobile devices—underscoring the patchwork nature of recent infrastructure upgrades.

The report features case studies on brands including but not limited to: Allstate, Capital One, Citibank, and GIECO.

Download a complete, media-only copy of L2's Financial Services report here.

About L2
L2 benchmarks the digital performance of over 2,200 brands across 14 industries globally. Our proprietary Digital IQ Index® is the global standard for measuring digital competence. We analyze 1,250 data points across site & ecommerce, digital marketing, social media and mobile to provide brands with actionable, data driven insights on their digital performance.

CONTACT:  Elizabeth Cooke, 1-646-902-4897, [email protected]

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