Financial institutions continue to innovate in an effort to keep up with customer demand as usage and engagement on mobile banking channels ramps up during the pandemic. Citizens Bank, CIT Bank and UMB Financial are among those lenders launching new features, educational components and enhanced functionality. In this ongoing series, Bank Innovation spoke with financial institutions across the country to learn how mobile banking has changed in the past five months and what’s to come for the digital banking space in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Citizens Bank

Providence, R.I.-based Citizens Bank has experienced a 20% increase in digital logins in the first half of 2020 compared with the prior-year period, according to Chief Experience Officer Beth Johnson.

“We have seen a huge jump in mobile usage since the pandemic began and it has sustained,” Johnson said. “We have yet to see that come back down, so my belief is that’s going to continue to accelerate as customers are given better insights and tools. They’re using them more and they’re just getting used to your bank as being one of those key places to visit on the mobile device.”

The $177 billion bank has begun to roll out its revamped mobile platform for Android and Apple devices, and already has some incremental features lined up to be released this fall, Johnson said. Payments will be a focus area for the bank’s mobile offerings in the next year, as Citizens looks to innovate with mobile wallet capabilities, money movement features and fraud mitigation tools, she said.

CIT Bank

CIT Bank, based in Pasadena, Calif., with $62 billion of assets, rolled out new self-service and payments capabilities last week as digital banking adoption grows amid the pandemic, according to Ravi Kumar, head of CIT’s direct bank. Specifically, the new features will allow customers to move funds via wire transfer to various recipient types, including escrow companies, intermediary and standard recipients, and to manage mature certificates of deposit through online and mobile platforms.

The new features launch as the average monthly number of customers enrolling in mobile banking increased by 89% in the April to June time frame, compared with October to December 2019. Mobile login volume has increased during the same time frame, with monthly average login volume increasing by 40%, Kumar added.

UMB Financial

Kansas City, M.O.-based UMB Financial’s transition to a new mobile banking platform from a legacy system coincided with the pandemic, with incremental conversions through February and March, according to Erik Herrera, senior vice president and digital group product manager.

There has been a “significant” increase in mobile banking usage, specifically with the launch of new account openings and the enhancement of money movement features, Herrera noted, with 18% of new retail accounts opened digitally throughout the pandemic, starting from zero accounts pre-pandemic. Also, app ratings have improved to 3.9 from 1.9 on a 5-point scale since transitioning to the new system. The bank is looking to expand its success to other business lines, like institutional banking and health care services, Herrera added.

The $29.8 billion dollar bank is also prioritizing omnichannel, or multichannel banking, a strategy that has accelerated during the pandemic, said Judy Bloch, senior vice president and director of omnichannel consumer banking. “We want our customers to have the ability to choose how they want to interact with us, whether that is online, by phone or in the branch and have each interface work seamlessly with the other,” she said. As such, UMB rolled out a secure messaging feature for customers to contact the bank “in a number of different ways and receive help immediately,” she added.

Even with this increased digital roadmap, Bloch was clear that the bank is being careful to not turn into a digital-only bank. “We don’t want it to be a faceless, nameless channel where you don’t have a human relationship,” she said.

Click here to read how M&T Bank, Fifth Third and PenFed Credit Union are advancing mobile banking capabilities, and visit Bankinnovation.net to catch up on this ongoing series exploring how mobile banking has changed amid the pandemic and where it will go from here.