YOUNG consumers in the Philippines are quickly switching to digital, a recent study by Fidelity National Information Service Inc. (FIS) revealed.
The Performance Against Customer Expectations (Pace) Index survey and report by the Jacksonville, Florida-headquartered financial-technology firm, revealed mobile personal financial management (PFM) application “adoption in the Philippines, at 51 percent overall and at 62 percent of Gen Y, is far higher than the global average.”
“Eighty-four percent of Filipino respondents using a PFM app use their primary financial institution’s app,” the report said. “Although mobile PFM app usage from primary banks leads usage of apps from other sources, Filipinos, especially Gen Y, are more likely to turn to mobile PFM apps from elsewhere.”
Gen Y, or millennials, refer to members of a generation born between 1980s to the year 2000.
The FIS Pace report revealed that nine out of 10 banked consumers with smartphones and/or tablets “respond positively to at least one personal financial control tool.”
“Preferred tools include a warning when funds run low, savings maximization, budget planning and budget discipline, timely bill payment and—most popular—a spending tracker.”
The FIS said the Philippines’s primary financial providers “must respond to the demands of the Gen Y” to remain engaged with their customers. “These entail a shift in the digital channel landscape, from computer use to mobile devices and tablets in particular.”
The FIS Pace Index survey and report includes results and analysis of how the Philippines’s financial institutions measure against their customers’ expectations. This is the first time the FIS included the Philippines in its second annual survey.
FIS explained the Pace survey polls “consumers around the globe about their expectations of their financial institutions and how they rank the importance of those items.” It also asks consumers how well their financial institutions meet those expectations. “The Pace survey asks consumers to rank the importance of, and financial institutions’ performance against, 18 attributes,” FIS said adding the results are compiled into a mathematical score—the Pace Index—“that allows us to evaluate how financial institutions perform, as compared to their peers.”