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Project Overview

With the creation of new Mobile Banking Apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7 Smartphones, the St.George Banking Group (including St.George Bank, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne) has extended its mobile banking capabilities to better help customers manage their finances on the go. St.George is leading the industry by offering more features and functions on more mobile phone platforms, across more devices than any other Bank.

Organisation

St.George Banking Group

Team

The project was designed and developed inhouse by St.George Banking Group staff, using the talent and resources of the eChannels and IT/Web Development teams.

Project Brief

With the emergence of a variety of new Smartphones and tablets, mobile has become the second biggest direct channel for the St.George Banking Group in the past 12 months, with more people transacting via their Smartphone than making calls to our contact centre.

The ability to deliver new features, smarter technology and better mobile banking solutions on different devices and platforms, is becoming extremely competitive and important in the marketplace.

With this in mind, in July 2011 the St.George Banking Group developed new Mobile Banking Apps for its 3 separate brands (St.George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne) across all device platforms (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7) both as a mobile service and individual Apps, as well as providing a mobile banking service for Symbian (Nokia) users.

Through our mobile banking service, we offer customers 95% of the most used functionality of Internet Banking via a Smartphone - giving customers the flexibility to do their banking wherever and whenever they want.

The new Apps were created with a new improved design, and faster and simpler access to a range of new features and benefits including the introduction of Mobile Banking Lite – a read only service providing customers with faster access to view their account balances and transaction history.

With over 500,000 financial transactions and 1.3 million logins each month and growing, the popularity of the St.George Banking Group’s new Mobile Banking Apps is undeniable.

Project Innovation / Need

With the launch of the next generation platform, customers who do their banking on their Smartphone (including iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7), now have access to 95% of the features used most often through the St.George Group’s internet banking service. So customers can do their banking anywhere, anytime, while they’re on the go.

Working across three different brands (St.George, BankSA and Bank of Melbourne) and 4 different platforms (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7) required the development of 12 different mobile banking applications to support this launch. As a project, this is hugely challenging from a technical implementation, to create the various branded versions of each of the Apps, tailored to each device, test the functionality, submit for approvals through the various App stores and launch simultaneously.

The St.George Banking Group is currently the only financial institution to offer mobile banking across all Smartphone platforms.

The new Apps give customers access to a range of new and improved features including the ability to:
*Check their account balances, transfer funds, pay bills, view interest earned and schedule payments
*Add BPAY billers and payees within the App
*View a summary of the last 2 years’ interest charges across all accounts
*Calculate and convert foreign currency (iPhone and Android only)
*Calculate savings and compare accounts
*View 30 days of account history and information such as interest rates and next loan repayment date
*Locate the nearest St.George/Bank of Melbourne/BankSA ATM or branch
*Increase credit card limit

User Experience

Each week the St.George Banking Group surveys 400 customers and it was this feedback that led to the many improvements in the new Apps. The St.George Banking Group is listening to its customers every day and using their great ideas to continually improve its service. The new Apps, which were 9 months in development, were no exception.

Customers told St.George that 70% of the time they use Mobile Banking, it’s for simple things like reviewing their balance and tracking payments. For this reason, their Apps for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 Smartphones now include a new feature called Mobile Banking Lite – this is a read-only service which gives customers 60% faster access and simple log-in, especially for this purpose.

St.George has also been able to further improve its Mobile Banking App for iPhone through the delivery of an “in-app” mobile banking platform, which enables all customer transaction to occur within the application, as opposed to using an external browser. The new platform provides consumers with faster login and faster access to key functions.

Our customer satisfaction survey results have increased to provide a higher NPS (Net Promoter Score). The highest of any channel in the Bank.

“I love the new layout and how easy it is to use. Love the account lite even better is the ATM locator…great work guys of keeping up with gen y.”

Project Marketing

With a limited marketing budget, we needed to ensure that we increased awareness with existing and potential new customers to the new Apps available through the extended array of devices for Smartphones (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7).

Using the St.George branch network, we created the message:

*New Mobile Banking App.
*Faster, simpler and easier to use
*Download yours today for iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry

This campaign message was delivered throughout July 2011 using a consistent look and feel via in-branch posters, take one flyers, counter cards and on in-branch ticketing screens. We also created a screen saver for all St.George ATM machines, so every time a customer made a cash withdrawal, enquiry or deposit they would be reminded of the new Apps available from the St.George Banking Group.

To support the marketing activity, we also ran a competition to WIN one of 15 Smartphones. The competition was advertised on the in-branch flyers, and entry was through www.stgeorge.com.au.

Social media was also used to communicate the availability of the new Apps and encourage entry into the competition. We received over 500 entries to the competition and increased downloads of the Android App by 43% and iPhone App by 26%. We conducted an exclusive interview with the Australian newspaper which led to national PR coverage.