Irish banking apps are a source of endless frustration to customers, even in the absence of periodic service disruptions.
But Bank of Ireland’s has come in for particular stick, described, for example, over the summer by comparison website Bonkers.ie as feeling “dated” and “clunky” – and lagging behind that of AIB’s “by no means perfect” offering.
The app was the most visible customer-facing outcome of the €1.15 billion technology investment programme that ran between 2016 and 2021. But even various subsequent app upgrades – including spending alerts and improvements in how customers can manage new statements – have left a lot be desired.
It may come as a surprise, therefore, that Bank of Ireland’s technology has been listed by Autonomous, the international financial sector research firm (owned by AllianceBernstein), as up there with the best in Europe.
Autonomous said in the 8th annual edition of its ranking of technology in retail banks that Bank of Ireland is now in the “winners’ quadrant this year”, in a list otherwise dominated by UK, Austrian and Benelux banks.
The ranking is based of hundreds of variables drawn from an in depth survey of individual banks, market data, banks financial and public sources, Autonomous said.
Strangely, AIB, which would be widely viewed by analysts to have been a more consistent spender on IT than its rival over the past two decades, has languished in Autonomous’s “relative laggards” column among 30 banks studied for the report.
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Where exactly Bank of Ireland scored well is not entirely clear from the report – but it made the top 25 per cent of the banks in terms of current state of digitisation and the outlook for ongoing transformation. Autonomous said it looked at things from mobile app and information technology (IT) spend to board and executive management focus on IT, and movements in staff focused on IT development.
Is it possible the staffing variable was skewed by the insourcing last year of previously outsourced IT work?
And is Bank of Ireland also getting the benefit in advance of significant upgrade of its mobile app, set to be rolled-out by the end of the year? It promises to be more user friendly and easier for the bank to add new features (such as the Zippay instant payments service the three Irish banks plan to launch early next year)? Here’s hoping.
