What technology reaches one-half of the world’s population of six billion? Some individuals even have several of them. Nearly one billion are replaced every year as new innovation and solutions are bundled into multi-functional devices rivaling personal computing power of just a few years ago. It sales outpaces laptops and desktops by over a four-to-one ratio and landlines by over three-to-one. It is the mobile handset an indispensible consumer extension that is growing in importance and functionality. To date, it has been a minimally explored channel for an evolving financial consumer with specific demographics and behaviors. Yet can it help an ailing industry, vanishing consumer base, and potentially mitigate delinquencies and foreclosures?
You might ask how this is new - voice is voice after all and handsets are not very robust? Today, nearly one-half of the new handsets are sold with removal storage cards to aid consumers with more personal usage needs such as photos, music, and ringtones. Increasingly there is a rapidly evolving series of mobile ideas spawned by well backed innovators concentrating on secure FSI applications and customizable delivery. These cards will become critical to FSI adoption. Have you taken a look at all the built-in laptop slots to aid in content migration for these little cards lately?
Early adopters have realized that with the radical consumer behavioral shifts and ubiquitous nature of a handset, the “next” generation of FSI and mortgage touchpoints may start and end with these multi-faceted and progressively more powerful customer devices. Moreover, by 2010, several groups have projected that perhaps 80% of all handsets sold will have removal storage for consumer “side loading” driven by robust applications and functionality introduced by the well known corporate giants of Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
The mobile handset is far more important that the voice or cell phone that ushered in this decade. It offers the consumer a device that is highly personal and ultra-portable. For FSI and mortgage institutions, it has the potential to marshal in new contact methods, products, and services. It also presents challenges surrounding security, privacy, and independence. Financial institutions have yet to fully integrate and mine the consumer behaviors and data that can be generated and augmented from the three billion mobile consumers. The data exists, is growing in sophistication, and has extensive “taboos” surrounding its downstream usage. Yet a model already exists today and its concept is presented below.
Whereas the nuances, privacy, and details are well beyond this column’s discussion, suffice it to say that if lenders and FSI groups proactively aligned their strategies and operations with the growing data volumes being generated, the impacts to operations could represent a quantum leap. Just as the innovation of mobile banking brought forth new business models, the mobile handset for lenders, real estate professionals, and retail banking holds a new consumer prospect that will likely grow and accelerate not just domestically, but globally. Voice will continue to be pushed down the value stack in level of consumer and business importance.The triangular linkage in the preceding diagram speaks to the opportunities and challenges that will be involved and subsequently will be overcome as demanded by a changing consumer base. In 2007, I wrote about this changing consumer keep the car, the HDTV, and the club memberships, but get rid of the house. As the economy and political uncertainty reaches its peak, watch for more consumers to go “virtual” leaving behind all tethered access and the traditional methods of reaching them.
Mao Tse-Tung, founder of the People’s Republic of China, once said, “Political power grows out of a barrel of a gun.” I wonder how true this is today when governments are more worried about communications and information accessibility than arms. Mobile innovation is here and it is accelerating in areas not previously associated with traditional “cell phone” or contact center thinking. Will FSI and mortgage operations (i.e., technology, models, processes, data, and people) be ready as consumer habits and models undergo a radical and rapid evolution? After all, mobile technology has become far more than texting in your favorite group on a reality show it is a multi-billion dollar business for the ISP’s and operators enveloping not just a consumer but an entire household. With the foundations already in place, how can FSI and lenders reposition their operations in an effort to reposition decaying business models?
