Dive Brief:
- Bank of America’ digital interactions grew 12% year over year to 26 billion in 2024, the bank announced Monday.
- Customers opting into proactive digital alerts drove 12 billion of those interactions, while their usage of Erica, the bank’s AI-powered virtual assistant, drove 676 million interactions.
- “Digital is the centerpiece of our relationship-driven strategy,” Nikki Katz, head of digital at Bank of America, said in a prepared statement. “Erica serves a dual role in our clients’ lives: a personal concierge and mission control for their finances, helping them make everyday financial decisions more efficiently.”
Dive Insight:
Bank of America is growing its digital engagement by offering a consistently convenient experience across the mobile app, according to Peter Wannemacher, a principal analyst at Forrester.
“It’s believably impressive,” Wannemacher said. “They are showing their mobile offerings are useful. They do a good job — there aren’t really any weak spots.”
In an assessment of banking apps, Forrester found that Bank of America’s app “at least meets and often exceeds customers' expectations” in 23 out of 25 categories, Wannemacher said.
The bank has worked to improve its alerts and notification experience. Nearly 38 million customers have chosen to receive digital alerts for insights such as account balances and virtual debit card usage, an increase of 7% year over year, according to Bank of America.
Notifications and alerts are a “win-win” for customers and the bank, as it helps customers stay on top of their finances and drives digital engagement for the bank, Wannemacher said. “That kind of usefulness and engagement is the type of thing that drives custom lifetime value.”
The bank has also worked to continually improve Erica, expanding its capabilities so that customers can even move money within the Erica interface.
Digital banking has grown in importance since the pandemic, with two-thirds of customers wanting to be able to accomplish any financial task on mobile, according to Forrester.
“Digital, and mobile in particular, is the hub of people’s relationship with money and with the brand that helps them with money,” Wannemacher said. “A bank can retain customers with mediocre digital offerings, but driving profitable business growth at scale requires more than just retention.”
