The increasing reliance by retail bank customers on mobile devices is not only keeping them out of bank branches, it's also crimping their use of internet and phone banking - although to a lesser extent. These are the top-line findings in a new report from Roy Morgan research, which showed that in in the six months to October 2018, 4.7 million people used bank branches during an average four week period, down from 6.5 million in 2014. This represents a drop of more than 27 per cent over four years. And while internet banking using a website remains the most popular banking channel, with 47 per cent of bank customers still preferring this option, its use has dropped from over 52 per cent in 2014.Phone banking - never the most popular option among bank customers - is declining, too, to the point where it was used by less than 14 per cent of bank customers in October 2018, down from 16 per cent in 2014.These decreases in banking choices coincide with an equally sudden take-up of mobile banking. On Roy Morgan's numbers, in October 2014 just over 29 per cent of bank customers (5.7 million of them) used mobile banking in an average four week period. This had increased to almost 45 per cent (9.2 million) by October 2018. Roy Morgan predicted that, on current trends, internet banking will be surpassed by mobile banking "within a year or two".It's not all bad news for bank branches, though, as Roy Morgan also found that, despite the many residential mortgage options available, more than half (52.2 per cent) of all current loans were obtained as a result of customers going into bank branches. This is well ahead of the 33 per cent who purchased their loan through a mortgage broker. And home loan customers who obtained their mortgage in person at a bank branch have the highest satisfaction rating, at 79 per cent, compared to 74 per cent satisfaction among borrowers who used a mortgage broker. There are still notable difference, though, with the largest gap in satisfaction reported among ANZ mortgage customers. Those who used a mortgage broker have only 63 per cent satisfaction, compared to 76 per cent among those who visited a branch directly. This latter finding poses a conundrum for ANZ's chief executive officer Shayne Elliott, in particular, as he told the banking and financial services royal commission last week that "we may be different than our peer group - less than a third of home loans are originated through a branch:  55 per cent come through brokers and another roughly 15 per cent come through our mobile banking network, ie we send somebody to you.  So the branch network is not a terribly efficient or well used avenue for home loans."Norman Morris, industry communications director at Roy Morgan, suggested that although mortgage brokers are an important channel for banks to acquire home loan customers, the "considerable adverse publicity" generated by the banking and financial services royal commission