VRL Knowledgebank recently announced a new report: "the branch is back" (see more info here). The summary of the report reads as follows:"The global retail banking industry is now in a period of innovative commitment to the branch, arguably not seen since the early 1990s. This quiet revolution is dealing with a more broadly-based agenda than just branch design, and is focusing on creating more customerorientated experiences and greater retail banking profitability."
If interested in the content, you can pay almost € 2000 to get access to the content.
From a mobile banking perspective, this is of course bad news, so I tried to get a bit more information on why a report could come to such a conclusion. I did not want to pay such a big price-tag just to find why these analysts see a different world that I do, so I used the information available for free. I could find no reference in the Contents page on how the evaluation was done to get to such a conclusion - now survey, no relative profitable measurements, nothing that could make one make such a statement.
I saw that the report refers to many case studies (predominantly in the UK and the US - not the markets where branchless banking is expected to be big), but did see reference to a case study in India (where, I presume "the branch is back"). The case study is for a bank called YES bank, which when you do a Google Search returns the following:
"Obopay India and YES Bank launch instant money transfer via mobile..."
Maybe the branches are required to sign up the mobile banking customers.