An investigation into how much fintechs and banking firms are investing in mobile has revealed a ‘massive gap’ between investments and returns on mobile initiatives.
According to the 2022 Mobile Product Success in Finance and Banking Report from mobile devops company Bitrise, businesses need to reprioritise their budgets to reflect mobile’s contributions.
The new research reveals that nearly half (49 per cent) of senior mobile leaders at finance and banking organisations say that mobile impacts 75 per cent of overall business revenue. However, 46 per cent report that their companies still invest less than 10 per cent of total product and engineering spend on mobile app development.
Between January 2020 and October 2021, the number of daily active fintech app users increased by 337 per cent. Yet many companies have still not made the connection between the success of their mobile initiatives and the success of their overall businesses.
“This insight is important as it shines a light on the fact that mobile has potentially come to compensate for other areas of businesses that are lagging,” said Barnabas Birmacher, CEO of Bitrise. “Mobile experiences are now fueling anywhere from a majority to all of some organisations’ revenue. The more these companies invest in achieving mobile excellence – beginning with their internal processes and ending at the user experience – the more revenue potential they’ll inevitably see.”
Other findings
The report also explores the complexities of building mobile apps in a regulated industry and uncovers a correlation between the delivery of high-quality apps and increased revenue. Other topics in the report include user experience, security, biometric technologies, release frequency, app ratings’ impact on user acquisition and conversion.
- Mobile now drives the majority of revenue at financial organisations. Eighty-four per cent say that mobile revenue accounts for 50 per cent or more of their total revenue.
- Investments in mobile app development are disproportionately low. Eight-one per cent spend less than 25 per cent of their total product and engineering spend on mobile app development.
- Managing regulatory and compliance-related bottlenecks becomes a bigger issue as mobile’s importance increases. Fifty-one per cent of respondents report that the regulations and red tape around mobile releases pose challenges. Eleven per cent can’t use the SDKs they want ande eight per cent have limited access to cloud tooling.
The report also reflects the responses of 108 heads of mobile at finance and banking organisations with dedicated mobile properties and engineering teams, as well as aggregated industry data.
