Therefore, we now turn our Spotlight for Mobile and Wireless onto the critical issues of wireless financial business. We expect huge growth in mobile use in China, Indonesia and India through 2004. Yet the reality is that we cannot see any banks increasing market share or reducing costs by deploying mobile banking facilities. Such facilities will, nevertheless, quickly become a required service for all banks. It is in applications for businesses and their employees that unexpected opportunities have arisen.
Financial institutions have many employees working away from offices.
Insurance companies, for instance, can use wireless devices to lift the efficiency and effectiveness of their field agents and claims professionals. In these and other applications, financial companies face many issues and challenges - e.g., security, confidentiality, privacy and regulatory compliance. On the technical side, they face challenges because of variety in the devices, competition between standards and the lack of any standard infrastructure for mobile systems. Enterprises also have to discover and develop applications with features and functions that will be compelling for users. Overcoming these challenges will require new skills and new arrangements to fit wireless technologies into an enterprise's structures and processes.