With ubiquitous mobile-phone usage, decreasing data costs, and enhanced, biometric security capabilities, leading banks and credit unions now have custom mobile applications at the heart of their digital strategy. One important component of these custom, mobile applications is face-to-face, in-app, video banking. Video-banking is simply the use of live video-conferencing technology to connect bank and credit union customers directly with bankers, relationship managers, or financial advisors. This mobile video-banking technology is now being used within banks' and credit unions' mobile applications so that customers can access financial services and face-to-face assistance anywhere. In this article, we will list five of the most important advantages that mobile video-banking provides to banks and credit unions.

1. Decreased infrastructure costs

Mobile video-banking capabilities allow financial institutions to decrease overhead by decreasing the need for costly, physical branches. Mobile video-banking allows customers to carry out both routine and more complicated, nuanced transactions that require face-to-face interaction from the comfort of their own home and mobile device. Mobile video-banking thus greatly lessens both the customer's need to visit physical branches and, simultaneously, the financial institution's need to build and staff such physical branches.

2. Efficient utilization of experts and human capital

Additionally, increased mobile video-banking usage allows financial instutions to centralize and more efficiently utilize their base of banking and financial experts. With mobile video-banking, financial institutions can have high-cost human capital more efficiently service customer demand, as, with mobile video-banking, the financial institution's pool of experts is no longer constrained to only working face-to-face with the limited customer populations that surround physical branch locations.

3. Document sharing and assistance with other digital banking services

Mobile video-banking technology now allows a financial institution's customers and representatives to view, edit, and discuss documents and product offers via mobile devices in real time. This capability allows the line between in-person and mobile video-banking services to truly be blurred, as more and more of the experiences of in-branch visits can now be mirrored in a financial institution's mobile application. Additionally, with document e-sign and paperless document processing, mobile video-banking can actually decrease paperwork and application processing times.

Mobile video-banking also allows a financial institution's customers to share their screen in real time with a representative of the financial institution. This allows personalized, real-time support for a financial institution's customers with the financial institution's self-serve, digital services. This custom support can lead to an increase in customers' familiarity and usage of the financial institution's entire spectrum of digital services.

4. Enhanced security over telephone banking

Financial institutions are often concerned with the security risks that may come with enhancing their services with mobile-banking technology. Fortunately, biometric sensors on mobile devices have made mobile banking more secure than existing telephone banking alternatives. Depth-sensing cameras and face-recognition technology, fingerprint scanners, and even iris scanners are becoming increasingly standard sensors on mobile devices. For mobile banking, these sensors help ensure the bank customer is actually who they claim to be. Through live, high-quality video feeds during a financial consultation or service, mobile video-banking helps add further assurances that the financial institution is speaking with the correct customer, as the financial institution's representative is now able to continuously see who is on the other end of the line.

5. Increase in accessibility to underserved customer segments

Video-banking allows banks to grow their customer base by allowing more access to underserved customer segments. One example of this is the Royal Bank of Scotland's use of SignVideo, a service that connects British Sign Language (BSL) signers with an interpreter through mobile video-banking technology. Using mobile video-banking technology, sign-language signers can be more conveniently and frequently served by their financial insitution, and a financial institution's sign-language customer base can grow immensely. Mobile video-banking also allows financial institutions to grow their customer base of individuals with physical-mobility limitations who may have difficulty traveling to a physical branch. Likewise, mobile video-banking also allows financial institutions to provide banking services and financial expertise to rural clients who may live far from a physical branch location.

As seen, mobile video-banking can provide a wide variety of benefits to a financial insitution's customers and, consequentially, competitive advantages to financial institutions that offer this functionality. Mobile video-banking is only predicted to rise in adoption and popularity over the coming years, and it will be a vital component for every successful financial institution's digital strategy.

Are you interested in reading further on mobile video-banking? Check out our mobile video-banking development work with Belfius Bank of Belgium here.