Questions About Mobile Banking Numbers Provided by Third Parties
Serious questions have surfaced about the data on mobile banking provided by some third-party information providers.
One of those providers is comScore. The company provided data on mobile banking to the Netbanker blog last week, which published the statistics. However, two of the major banks highlighted by the data — Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase — have distanced themselves from the data. The banks told Bank Innovation that they would not validate the comScore/Netbanker data.
Netbanker produces the Finovate events. The next Finovate will be in San Francisco in May.
Bank of America responded in our post last week. JPMorgan Chase spokesperson Jessica Sheehan told Bank Innovation, “We cannot confirm the accuracy of those numbers.”
JPMorgan Chase also provided shared mobile numbers that are provided to shareholders. The bank claims 12 million online households and 8 million mobile households. Mobile households are growing 35% year over year, according to the bank.
It’s worth noting that these numbers are different than those from the bank’s January 2013 earnings call, relating to Q4 2012. In that call, CFO Marianne Lake said, “We have over 31 million active online and 12 million active mobile customers.” The difference here does not necessarily point to a conflict, as these numbers are measuring users, while those above measure households.
Neither Bank of America nor JPMorgan Chase was willing to say that the comScore data was on the mark.
We reached out to comScore for more information on how they tabulate “mobile-only” touches, which can also be seen as a question of how online touches are correlated with mobile.
The apparent deficiencies in the mobile banking data raise some questions about performance in the channel. While nearly every banker in the nation will tout the double-digit growth rates in his bank’s mobile channel, overall industrywide actual performance may deviate from the presumptions based on published data.
Will the real mobile banking data please stand up?
