The document discusses a study by The App Business (TAB) that evaluated the mobile banking apps of major UK banks. TAB tested the apps against 9 common banking tasks and found that the apps generally failed to help users achieve their desired outcomes in an easy and seamless manner. For example, apps did not allow users to easily track spending, pay others back, or understand their financial products and fees. TAB believes banks are missing opportunities to improve customer experience and that one app integrating data from multiple banks could significantly enhance usability and transparency. TAB advocates that banks focus on clear customer outcomes to develop truly excellent mobile products.

1. © The App Business
The Pursuit of Product Excellence
How incumbent UK bank apps are failing to seize the mobile opportunity.
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2. © The App Business
At The App Business (TAB), we believe 2016 is an inflection
point for UK banks. Shifts in the regulatory environment,
challenging economic conditions, elevated customer
expectations, new sources of competition - not to mention
the relentless march of technology - are all combining to
threaten the banking status quo.
Say goodbye to the status quo
© The App Business

3. © The App Business
This unique moment in time for retail banks has been a key
area of focus for our strategists at TAB of late.*
The product of recent research and thinking, we developed
the Strategic Mobility Framework shown right to identify the
six key areas we believe retail banks must prioritise in order
to seize the opportunities on offer.
In this short deck, we take a closer look at one particular
part of the framework - product excellence - and ask: which
of the UK’s Big Six high street banks** are achieving mobile
product excellence, right now, with their existing apps?
RIGHT: TAB’s Strategic Mobility Framework
* To learn more about our point of view on the future of retail banking, head over to our blog at www.theappbusiness.com
** The Big Six includes HSBC, Barclays, Halifax, Santander, Natwest and Lloyds.
2
MULTI-CHANNEL
EXPERIENCES
A seamless, single customer view
driving greater business intelligence.
3
UNTETHERED
TEAMS
More productive staff, empowered
by mobile tools and enablement.
4
RESPONSIVE
SYSTEMS
A service-based technology
approach, with scalability baked-in.
5
STREAMLINED
OPERATIONS
Smarter, simpler processes powered
by automation and self-service.
6
BUSINESS
AGILITY
An embedded ability to adapt
and respond to high-speed change.
1
PRODUCT
EXCELLENCE
A product vision for the mobility era,
built on clear customer outcomes.

4. © The App Business
When you think about it, the core ‘jobs’ people hire
banks to do have stayed pretty consistent. People want
easy access to their account details, the ability to
action fast debits and transactions, as well as access to
meaningful advice on how banks can help them get the
most from their money.
The real problem is that our expectations and demand
for faster, easier ways to achieve those jobs, or desired
outcomes, have risen dramatically - and the way banks
help fulfil them simply hasn’t kept pace.
Today, we expect to access essential services - from
the weather, to ordering food or an Uber (shown in the
background here) - anytime and anywhere. You might
think that banks have already answered that need. The
Big Six, for example, all have apps - so surely, banks
have kept pace with customer expectations?
At The App Business, we disagree.
© The App Business

5. © The App Business
We invited a group of forty banking customers to join us at TAB
HQ for a series of impromptu, ‘guerilla’ testing workshops.
We identified nine simple, everyday banking tasks to test how
well the apps help customers achieve their desired outcomes.
These included, for example, paying someone back,
understanding spending habits and trying to open a savings
account.
We asked our users to complete these tasks, allowing us to test
how well existing apps from the Big Six helped customers
achieve their desired outcomes - outcomes which, as
discussed, really haven't changed that much over the years.
Time to get testing
© The App Business

6. © The App Business
The unsurprising news was that far from creating a seamless
customer experience, most existing banking apps still
required lots of manual manipulation on the part of the
customer.
The result was that our nine simple, everyday tasks (four of
which are highlighted, right) became laborious, frustrating
mobile experiences. Here’s a good example: one of the apps
in question currently lacks an automated way to track and
compare a customer’s monthly spend. Instead, users are
required to manually add their spending each month, in
order to compare with the previous.
Today, customers expect far smarter solutions, with
information served up automatically - think of Google Now,
for example. That means an app itself isn’t enough: to be
really valuable to customers, it must help them get a job
done - like compare their monthly spend - better.
In your app…
Find out how much you have,
free to spend, until payday.
I want to know how
much money I really have.
I want to pay
someone back.
In your app…
You owe the person to your
left £1. Pay them back.
I want to track
my spending.
In your app…
Find out how much money
you spent this month.
I want to understand
my spending habits
In your app…
Find out what you spend the
majority of your money on.
CUSTOMER DESIRED OUTCOME WORKSHOP TASK
RIGHT: Four example tasks users were asked to complete as part of our testing workshops.

7. © The App Business
Our workshop results highlighted there’s little to
differentiate existing mobile banking experiences amongst
the Big Six.
No single banking app was able to perform consistently well
across all tasks in relation to usability, simplicity and flow.
Most experiences were like a rollercoaster: filled with highs,
but also notable lows - as shown by the graph on the right.
Interestingly, with the exception of a few tasks, most bank
apps followed the same performance pattern. This suggests
that the customer pain point in each app occurs at the
same point, for the same task. Although some apps might
be better than others at helping customers ‘save for
something big’, they fail to satisfy in other areas including
paying someone with ease, or conveying visibility of
products and services.
FREETOSPEND
BARCL AYS
HALIFAX
HSBC
SANTANDERLLOYDS
NATWEST
PAYSOMEONE
TRACKSPENDING
SPENDING
HABITS
SAVEFOR
SOMETHINGBIG
SAVINGGOAL
PROGRESS
DEALWITH
UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS
UNDERSTAND
MYPRODUCTS/
SERVICES
BEINCONTROL
FREETOSPEND
BARCL AYS
HALIFAX
HSBC
SANTANDERLLOYDS
NATWEST
PAYSOMEONE
TRACKSPENDING
SPENDING
HABITS
SAVEFOR
SOMETHINGBIG
SAVINGGOAL
PROGRESS
DEALWITH
UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS
UNDERSTAND
MYPRODUCTS/
SERVICES
BEINCONTROL
Same-same, and not so different
NINE BANKING TASKS
USERRATING
RIGHT: The graph opposite maps the user experience across the existing Big Six apps
against our nine workshop tasks.

8. © The App Business
FREETOSPEND
BARCL AYS
HALIFAX
HSBC
SANTANDERLLOYDS
NATWEST
PAYSOMEONE
TRACKSPENDING
SPENDING
HABITS
SAVEFOR
SOMETHINGBIG
SAVINGGOAL
PROGRESS
DEALWITH
UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS
UNDERSTAND
MYPRODUCTS/
SERVICES
BEINCONTROL
FREETOSPEND
BARCL AYS
HALIFAX
HSBC
SANTANDERLLOYDS
NATWEST
PAYSOMEONE
TRACKSPENDING
SPENDING
HABITS
SAVEFOR
SOMETHINGBIG
SAVINGGOAL
PROGRESS
DEALWITH
UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS
UNDERSTAND
MYPRODUCTS/
SERVICES
BEINCONTROL
Let’s zoom in on number eight of our nine everyday banking
tasks (see highlighted area, right): I want to understand my
financial products and services.
Why is this outcome important? Well, with the introduction
of the Open Banking Framework, a bank’s data and the
details of its services will become move easily comparable.
That means this information will become more visible -
whether a bank is ready or not. Addressing this now allows a
bank to get ahead, and turn it to their advantage.
To test how well existing apps currently provide this
transparency, we asked users to find their account plan
details within their apps. This includes interest rates,
rewards and fees.
“I want to understand my financial
products and services.”
NINE BANKING TASKS
USERRATING

9. © The App Business
No banking app provided a clear, transparent view of the
banking products and services available via mobile
“I can’t see how much
interest I’m paying
on my loan.”
“Thought this would be easy,
but after 10 minutes I still can’t
find anything.”
“I have no idea how many
rewards points I have and what
I can get with them.”
“I’ve no idea what my yearly
tax-free allowance is on my ISA.
I can’t find this in-app.”
“There’s no info on how much
I’m paying for home insurance
anywhere in the app.”
“I can’t find out how much
interest I’m getting from my
savings account.”
Across all six existing apps, our workshops highlighted this particular desired outcome consistently received a poor rating.
From not being able to see how many reward points they had accumulated, to how much interest they pay on a loan, the
in-app experience failed to help customers achieve their desired outcome.

10. © The App Business
These ‘gaps’ in the customer experience represent
underserved and untapped opportunities, as
indicated right.
So, while the results of our workshops highlighted lots of
challenges in existing mobile banking products, what that
really means is that there are lots opportunities banks could
be taking immediate advantage of.
FREETOSPEND
BARCL AYS
HALIFAX
HSBC
SANTANDERLLOYDS
NATWEST
PAYSOMEONE
TRACKSPENDING
SPENDING
HABITS
SAVEFOR
SOMETHINGBIG
SAVINGGOAL
PROGRESS
DEALWITH
UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS
UNDERSTAND
MYPRODUCTS/
SERVICES
BEINCONTROL
FREETOSPEND
BARCL AYS
HALIFAX
HSBC
SANTANDERLLOYDS
NATWEST
PAYSOMEONE
TRACKSPENDING
SPENDING
HABITS
SAVEFOR
SOMETHINGBIG
SAVINGGOAL
PROGRESS
DEALWITH
UNEXPECTED
PROBLEMS
UNDERSTAND
MYPRODUCTS/
SERVICES
BEINCONTROL
AREA OF OPPORTUNITY
Underperformance presents
a clear set of quick wins
NINE BANKING TASKS
USERRATING

11. © The App Business
The Open Banking Framework creates considerable new opportunities for retail banks to exploit.
What if, for example, a single mobile product aggregated a user’s financial information across all providers?
Transparency and visibility across all
your live accounts, from multiple
banks, in a single view.
Seamlessly apply for new products,
without leaving the app or filling in
lengthy repetitive forms.
At-a-glance account summaries,
detailed statements and payment
options in one place.
Looking beyond the quick wins
© The App Business

12. © The App Business
Such an app would make it easy for customers to manage
each of their bank accounts with a simple, informative
overview of their finances.
The bank itself becomes a platform, allowing providers to
push new products and services based on data that tracks
user spending and saving habits. Furthermore, this could
open doors for even greater opportunities - including
targeted cross-selling - through a flawless user experience.

13. © The App Business
In this short deck, we don’t pretend to have all the
answers: what we highlight is how, by focusing on
customers’ desired outcomes, existing mobile banking
apps can still achieve much greater product excellence
and in turn, unlock even greater value - for customers,
and banks.
We believe it’s high time retail banks reclaimed the
initiative. After all, retail banks have a major advantage to
exploit: their apps sit on millions of user devices across
the UK. Now imagine if one of those apps delivered a truly
category-defining experience…
To help our clients do just that, we are experimenting
with new technology, building voice-enabled banking
experiences and helping ambitious banks, like ING, build a
deeper understanding of high value customer outcomes.
RIGHT: Recent TAB mobile banking prototype.
© The App Business

14. © The App Business
To learn more about our recent banking app review,
and to see our latest demos in action, get in touch.
—
enquiries@theappbusiness.com
+44 203 657 9785
The App Business | The Spitfire Building, 71 Collier Street, London N1 9BE | www.theappbusiness.com
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