Mobile RDC Expected to Grow Greatly in 2012

A Celent report predicts that multiple initiatives will be announced in the coming months.

The number of US financial institutions planning to offer mobile RDC has doubled over the past year, according to a new report issued by Celent.

The report, titled "The State of Consumer RDC 2011: Mobile Takes Center Stage" collected data from 218 financial institutions, as well as vendors, solutions providers and others. 80 percent of the financial institutions surveyed said they planning or considering an RDC solution.

While RDC has mostly been limited to business clients in the past, over the past several years banks, especially credit unions, have begun offering retail customers RDC services using devices the consumers already own, such as desktop scanners.

However, more popular is mobile RDC, which Celent said banks will increasingly offer to their business and consumer customers. In part, the highly advertised launch of Chase Mobile Deposit in August 2010 may have had a significant influence in this, said Celent.

According to the report, RDC-related product launches were slow this past year as banks were preoccupied with compliance and regulatory issues. With FFIEC related projects now largely completed, many financial institutions are turning their attention to serving customers, and Celent said it expects multiple initiatives to be announced in the coming months, but sales and marketing efforts will be slow and cautious as banks balance business objectives and compliance risk.

"The real challenge with self-service deposits may be the transformation required as transactions move out of the branch," said Bob Meara, senior analyst with Celent's banking group and author of the report. "Self-service deposits are at odds with the pervasive cross-selling culture at most banks. Reduced branch traffic presents a sales challenge, but deposit-related foot traffic comes at a significant cost; one that U.S. banks may no longer be able to afford. “Mobile RDC may be the best idea yet to hasten the branch transformation we all know to be inevitable."

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio