Mobile banking is no longer a complementary channel; it is the bank itself. Customers expect to live their financial lives entirely through a single app that is intuitive, responsive, and secure. Forrester’s Digital Experience Review™: NA Mobile Banking Apps, Q3 2025 underscores this reality but also reveals that even top North American banks struggle to meet rising expectations. U.S. Bank emerges as the leader, followed closely by Bank of America, yet the report shows a persistent gap between customer needs and what banks currently deliver. The report offers valuable insights, but a deeper look highlights systemic challenges and untapped opportunities—particularly the role of no-code platforms and agentic AI in transforming mobile banking experiences.
Understanding the Current Landscape
Forrester evaluated seven major North American banks, scoring their mobile apps across 26 customer scenarios spanning money management, account maintenance, transfers, savings and investment tools, and support tasks. The evaluation highlights U.S. Bank’s all-around functionality and strong money management features. Its app enables customers to easily view balances, track spending, find transactions, and improve their financial well-being. Bank of America excels in money movement and in-app customer service, with the Erica chatbot providing guidance on bill payments and account changes.
Yet even leaders in the space only partially meet expectations. Across the board, banks struggle with fraud prevention, accessibility, and real-time money movement. Customers expect not just functional apps, but apps that anticipate their needs, reduce friction, and act as proactive partners in financial health. Forrester’s findings reveal that mobile banking is still largely transactional rather than transformative.
Key Weaknesses in North American Mobile Banking
1. Fraud and Security Assurance Remain Weak
Fraud continues to be a major pain point for customers, with losses from bank transfers and cryptocurrency scams increasing. Forrester highlights that most banks fail to provide proactive, personalized, and actionable security insights. Few apps allow users to report or dispute suspicious activity quickly or guide them through dispute resolution. In today’s climate, a banking app that does not visibly protect customers risks losing trust, which directly impacts retention and lifetime value.
2. Accessibility Is Treated as a Checklist
Most banks implement accessibility only to satisfy regulatory requirements, rarely optimizing for genuine inclusivity. Users with disabilities or diverse needs encounter apps that are difficult to navigate, poorly structured, or reliant on minimal assistive features. Accessibility should not be optional; it must be baked into the design of all features, ensuring every customer can independently manage their finances.
3. Money Movement Across Borders and First-Time Tasks Is Cumbersome
Sending money internationally or paying a new bill remains unnecessarily complex. While fintech disruptors have set high standards for real-time, intuitive transfers, traditional banks often rely on outdated interfaces that require multiple confirmations, manual entry, and little guidance. Customers increasingly expect smooth, self-explanatory workflows that anticipate potential errors and provide instant feedback.
4. Differentiation Is Rare
Banking apps are evolving into crowded ecosystems, where basic functionality like card management, data tracking, and account updates are expected. Few banks deliver experiences that meaningfully differentiate their brand. Standout features, such as U.S. Bank’s family finance tools or Ally’s goal-driven savings buckets, are exceptions rather than the rule. Most banks still struggle to move from transactional utility to proactive financial engagement.
What Forrester Gets Right
Forrester correctly identifies several best practices that set leading apps apart:
Money management is central to customer value: Apps that help users track spending, improve financial health, and visualize goals perform better in satisfaction and retention.
Onboarding for new tasks is critical: Simply guiding a new customer is not enough. Apps must provide context and support when users attempt a feature for the first time, like Scotiabank’s bill pay flow or U.S. Bank’s predictive “Let us find your bills” tool.
Personal data visibility builds trust: Apps that allow customers to control marketing communications, consent, and data sharing reinforce confidence in the institution.
These insights highlight a broader theme: mobile banking is not only about efficiency; it is about trust, guidance, and reducing cognitive load for the customer.
Why Banks Are Stuck
Most banks’ challenges are not conceptual—they understand what customers want. The problem is structural. Legacy IT systems, siloed development teams, and long release cycles prevent rapid innovation. Enhancing app functionality often requires months of coordination, testing, and integration, leaving digital teams unable to keep pace with shifting expectations.
This is where no-code platforms and agentic AI can make a measurable difference.
How No-Code Platforms Can Drive Change
No-code platforms empower banks to build, test, and deploy new features faster than traditional development methods. Their advantages include:
Rapid Prototyping: Digital teams can experiment with workflows or UI changes in weeks, not months. Testing new money management or fraud reporting features becomes iterative rather than high-stakes.
Personalized Experiences: Teams can create customer-segmented dashboards, quick-action menus, or predictive insights without touching core legacy systems.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Product, UX, and customer service teams can contribute to app enhancements directly, reducing bottlenecks.
Continuous Iteration: No-code allows apps to evolve in real time based on user behavior, improving adoption and satisfaction continuously.
In short, no-code transforms app development from a slow, IT-driven process to an agile, customer-focused capability.
How Agentic AI Elevates the Mobile Experience
Agentic AI goes beyond traditional chatbots by acting on behalf of customers to proactively manage financial tasks. Unlike reactive assistive AI, agentic AI can:
Predict and prevent errors: Identify potential fraudulent transactions and initiate dispute workflows automatically.
Optimize financial health: Suggest savings plans, detect overspending, or forecast upcoming bills.
Automate repetitive tasks: Update contact information, schedule transfers, or set spending limits with minimal user input.
Personalize engagement: Learn user behavior and preferences to deliver contextual insights, nudges, and alerts.
Combined with no-code, agentic AI allows banks to deliver apps that are not just functional but anticipatory. This turns a mobile app from a static tool into a digital financial teammate, increasing engagement, retention, and customer lifetime value.
Moving Beyond Transactional Banking
Forrester’s report rightly emphasizes that differentiation comes from features that help customers “stay on top of money” and “improve financial health.” Yet few banks consistently deliver this. Integrating agentic AI and no-code workflows can fill the gap:
Shared finance tools: Agentic AI can manage family accounts or small business payroll, automatically updating balances and permissions.
Financial wellness nudges: Predictive alerts and personalized recommendations guide users toward better financial outcomes.
Seamless exploration of new products: No-code can enable in-app quizzes, product recommendations, and onboarding flows that adapt instantly to user input.
This approach shifts the app from a reactive channel to an ecosystem that actively improves customers’ financial lives.
Practical Steps for Banks
To transform their mobile banking experience, banks should focus on three priorities:
Adopt a platform-first approach: Use no-code platforms to accelerate feature deployment, allow rapid testing, and maintain app flexibility.
Embed agentic AI: Move beyond assistive bots. Use AI to take action, manage tasks, and deliver predictive insights, reducing customer effort.
Design for inclusivity and trust: Incorporate accessibility beyond compliance, make security visible and actionable, and ensure users feel in control of their financial data.
By combining these strategies, banks can convert app downloads into meaningful engagement, increase loyalty, and position themselves as proactive financial partners.
Conclusion
Forrester’s 2025 Digital Experience Review paints a clear picture: mobile banking apps are central to the customer relationship but still lag expectations. Leaders like U.S. Bank and Bank of America perform well, but even they face gaps in fraud protection, accessibility, and differentiation. Legacy systems, siloed teams, and slow development cycles limit the ability to innovate at the speed customers demand.
No-code platforms and agentic AI provide a roadmap for closing this gap. No-code accelerates delivery, empowers cross-functional teams, and enables continuous iteration. Agentic AI allows apps to act on behalf of customers, providing predictive guidance, proactive fraud alerts, and automated task management. Together, these tools transform mobile apps from static transactional tools into dynamic, anticipatory financial ecosystems.
The future of banking is not merely mobile-first—it is proactive, intelligent, and customer-obsessed. Banks that embrace this approach will not just meet expectations; they will redefine them. Those that do not risk being left behind. For mobile banking apps to truly become the hub of financial life, institutions must move from incremental improvements to bold reinvention powered by no-code agility and agentic AI intelligence.