comScore has released its inaugural study of the mobile financial services industry. The comScore report, Mobile Financial Services: The Market Today & Opportunities for Tomorrow, looks at the current state of the industry and mobile financial users, and highlights areas for potential growth in this rapidly evolving market. In conjunction with the report, comScore is hosting a supplemental webinar on 30 July, which will provides additional industry insights from comScores analysts.
The report leverages multiple comScore data sources to provide a comprehensive view of the mobile financial services market, including an overview of the current US mobile landscape, and insights into the mobile banking, credit card, insurance and brokerage sectors.
The report notes that mobile financial services adoption is highly dependent upon device technology and high bandwidth (3G) networks. A study of how mobile users access their banking accounts found that mobile web browsing ranked as the most popular method for both Smartphone (44.%) and 3G users (53.%), followed closely by mobile applications (48.1% of 3G users and 40.6% of Smartphone users).
The relative parity among usage of browsers vs. applications for access to mobile banking indicates the growing importance of ease of use for accessing accounts and conducting transactions. Interestingly, the percentage of mobile bankers who used SMS for access to their account information was substantially higher among 3G users (41%) than Smartphone users (25%).
The increasing adoption of Smartphones and access to 3G networks, along with the rapid development of mobile apps, have created a fertile environment for the acceleration of mobile banking, says comScore Senior Director, Marc Trudeau. A seamless mobile banking user experience is necessary for this behaviour to take hold, and the convergence of the aforementioned technologies is now making mobile phones a viable access point for personal banking transactions. Financial institutions hoping to capitalize on this quickly emerging consumer banking trend need to be ahead of the curve and understand how consumers are using the mobile channel today, and how they would like to use it in the future. 
The comScore report offers an insight into the usage patterns of mobile financial services users, including their preferred points of access. 31% of mobile customers access their financial accounts primarily from home, even though many households have PC-based Internet available as well. Another 25% conduct transactions when running errands, while 15% do so during their commute. 9% of respondents indicated that they primarily access their accounts while on vacation, and 8% do so primarily while travelling for business.
You can get more information about the report, and register for the webinar, here.