FICO Survey Finds UK Trailing Asia in B2C Mobile App Usage, But Leading the West for Interest in Mobile Services

-- China has the highest percentage of people who interact with businesses via mobile devices daily, and France has the lowest

LONDON, Nov. 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- FICO (NYSE:FICO), a leading predictive analytics and decision management software company, has released the results of an international survey of businesses and consumers showing that UK consumers ranked fourth lowest of 14 countries surveyed in terms of mobile sophistication, with only 17 percent considered 'Mobile Natives' — those who interact with businesses via mobile devices every day. The UK had far fewer Mobile Natives than front-runners China (51 percent), Korea (50 percent) and India (49 percent), but more than the United States (16 percent) Japan (15 percent) and France, which had the lowest percentage of mobile-native responders, at just 12 percent.

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The survey looked at consumer preferences and tendencies with regards to mobile, online and in-person interactions with banks, government agencies, healthcare providers, insurers, and retailers. It included 2,239 adult smartphone users in the UK, Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Turkey and the United States.

The survey also showed that consumers in the UK are more open to the idea of mobile interactions with businesses than consumers in other Western markets. For example, 41 percent of UK respondents said they found the idea of receiving alerts on their mobile for overdue bills via a payment alert app attractive, compared to only 27 percent of French respondents.

"Consumers are really the ones driving UK businesses' adoption of mobile services," said Hayley Kershaw, FICO's managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "We see a great deal of demand, particularly in banking and retail, while the more forward-looking insurance providers are beginning to seize opportunities to use mobile channels to build customer loyalty. That said, businesses of all kinds need to build customer trust in addition to mobile capabilities, as British consumers are the second most reluctant population to divulge personal data, according to our survey."

Among the applications offered by retailers and financial institutions, the most popular in every one of the 14 countries surveyed was found to be alerts –for example, apps that notify consumers of suspicious transactions. Overall, more than 72 percent of respondents worldwide described such apps as attractive.

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