How are people banking now?

If I asked you to cast your mind back to the 1980s, you might think perms, mix tapes and bright neon colours. If I asked you to think about banking in the 1980s, then you’d almost certainly think branch. 

By rewinding that far back, we can see how far we’ve come. Through changes in customer behaviour, technology and innovation, today’s banking experience is completely different compared to customers’ experiences even a decade ago. 

With half of UK adults banking with us we really understand what UK consumers want. With more customers choosing mobile as their preferred way to bank, we’re undertaking one of the biggest transformations in financial services so we can bring the best of mobile banking to our customers.

Mobile banking

Most of our customers now choose mobile, digital or telephone banking as the main way to manage their money. We only need to go back to the 2000s to see the opposite – when mobile banking didn’t exist and internet banking was in its infancy. 

Nowadays mobile banking is the way customers prefer to bank. And we expect it to grow in the months and years ahead.

Of the 21 million customers banking with us online, over 17 million choose mobile banking, making us the UK’s biggest mobile bank. Last year alone we saw around six billion logons to our mobile app and internet banking. By 2025 we expect this to be over seven billion logons – just shy of the world’s population. 

Breaking that down, that’ll be 23 million of our customers logging on around 300 times a year – so almost every day. Only social media platforms see more engagement on their apps in the UK than we do. 

And that’s why we’re investing in mobile. In the past two years, we’ve rolled out a record number of app releases to bring the best features to our customers. 

Why are so many customers choosing mobile to manage their money? 

At one time it would have been unimaginable to have access to all of your finances on a 7” screen, never mind from the comfort of your home, 24/7/365, anywhere in the world. 

But that’s exactly what we’ve brought to our customers. We’ve put the power of finance in people’s hands: from paying in cheques, to seeing all your money in one place, right through to applying for finance – customers have complete control of their finances in ways that just weren’t possible when relying solely on branches.

Technology has undoubtedly played a huge part but – above all – customers’ preferences for ease, convenience and safety has made mobile banking the success it is. People now use their banking app just like they use their Amazon, Sainsbury’s or Just Eat apps. That’s good for customers and it’s good for banking competition. 

Mobile makes the customer experience more personalised too and alerts is just one of the ways we do that. Last year alone, we delivered over six billion alerts to customers and by 2025, we’re aiming to grow that number to 10 billion alerts each year. 

An example that helped put more money in people’s accounts was targeted notifications to customers letting them know they could benefit from a higher interest rate on their savings. With a changing interest rate environment in 2023, this really helped us reach customers in a way that traditional banking methods couldn’t – and make many customers better off. 

How is Lloyds Banking Group driving innovation in mobile banking?

We’re leading the way when it comes to mobile. At the heart of our strategy is a brilliant platform that brings together data, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. In other words, combining these capabilities means we can roll out the latest features and developments to customers – quickly. 

One of the innovations we’re most proud of is conversational banking – or our mobile messaging capability. Right now we have around 150,000 in-app chats happening each week. Those chats might be with our robo-advisers or passed on to one of our colleagues. 

Part of innovation is learning what works and what doesn’t; and we’ve learned a lot in this space. When we rolled out mobile messaging, we found some of our customers were leaving chats when they weren’t getting the response they expected. It meant they then had to phone us to get an answer to their query. 

We soon realised this was because their question wasn’t properly understood. So we looked to technology and innovation for an answer.

We put in place an AI solution that would help improve the app’s understanding of the questions being asked by customers (known as a Large Language Model Classifier for the technical readers among us!).

This helped us respond more accurately and we’ve already seen improvements. More customers are now able to have their questions answered in mobile messaging, first time, without needing to call us.  

Mobile messaging in banking will develop massively in the months and years ahead and we’re at the forefront. We’re currently on track to generate an incredible 12 million mobile messaging interactions with our customers annually by the year 2025. 

But it doesn’t stop there. We’re refreshing our apps and introducing brilliant new features which will be great for our customers. More on that later this year.

But mobile-first doesn’t mean mobile-only

We recognise the benefits of uniting digital and human banking so it creates the best experience for our customers. 

Technology makes humans more human: the mobile app makes everyday banking easier, but our wonderful people will always be there when our customers need them. They have deeper conversations and demonstrate care when our customers have more complex needs. Our people are a huge asset.

That combination of digital and people is the winning formula. And we have a real range of ways to bank with us. That’s what makes us unique, and brings greater flexibility to our customers. 

Transformation through technology has meant we can be around at times that are more convenient for our customers and give everyone access to ‘national teams’. Gone are the days of waiting on the local branch to open or queueing at peak times.

Video banking is a good example of increasing availability for customers. Today you can have an appointment with one of our mortgage advisers through video, in a branch, which speeds up the whole process. We’re introducing more services to video banking as we learn from this new capability. 

Looking ahead, we’ll be changing our physical footprint to reflect how our customers are banking. We’re trialing some new formats including kiosks and advice centres, with some exciting concepts launching this year.

These options will sit alongside our brilliant Community Bankers who help customers in local communities. We now have over 100 in place across the length and breadth of the UK and we’ll be introducing more this year. 

For life’s tougher moments, such as support with money when you lose a loved one or arranging a power of attorney, our skilled teams in our call centres are there to provide care and support.  

And all of our colleagues can help customers with their digital banking – whether that be over the phone, in branch or through our online support. We want to make sure no-one is left behind.  

A mobile future we’re investing in

Mobile banking is the future; a future that’s already present. We’re making sure that anything a customer has ever been able to do online, over the phone or in branch, can be done on mobile – plus a whole lot more!

To make this happen we’re investing just under £300 million over the next five years in our digital channels. This will bring new innovations and industry-leading services, alongside new features for our apps. This all makes banking easier, better and safer.

Customers rightly expect a lot from us, and if we truly deliver our purpose of helping Britain prosper then a mobile-first approach to banking isn’t only our opportunity to help meet more customers’ financial needs – it’s our responsibility.