While credit unions continue to adapt to the mobile-first era, a new study from Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Invoca, found that consumers rely heavily on offline interactions when making important financial decisions.

The call-intelligence company’s State of the Consumer Banking Experience surveyed more than 1,200 U.S. adults who have taken out a loan greater than $15,000 in the last three years to understand how consumer interactions with a financial institutions influences their banking decisions.

The U.S. financial services industry will spend $8.37 billion on digital advertising in 2016, a 14.5% gain from 2015 according to the eMarketer report.

Nevertheless, when evaluating a loan, Invoca survey respondents ranked in-person meetings and phone calls as their preferred modes of communication with financial institutions; more than a quarter made at least four phone calls to financial institutions before selecting one for their loan. Moreover, the bigger the loan the more likely potential customers are to call: 93% of people who took out loans of $100,000 or more made at least one call to the financial institution they ultimately chose for their loan.

 

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