Chase in the US, helped by its wide range of transactions, tops a ranking of 15 large retail banks, compiled by Forrester Research, when it comes to mobile banking functionality.

Spain’s La Caixa is the top-performer in Europe, receiving particularly high marks for its native mobile and tablet apps that can operate across four operating systems (Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS and Windows Phone).

UK banks, however, are found to be laggards in Forrester’s list. They were slow to take mobile banking seriously, says the research firm, and have still not caught up.

Using its mobile banking functionality benchmark methodology, Forrester assessed each of the 15 banks across eight categories: range of touchpoints, enrolment and login, account information, transactional functionality, service features, cross-channel guidance, sales and acquisition, and usability

The average score was 56 out of 100, with Chase securing first spot with 71 points.

The US bank scored particularly well (86 out of 100) on transactional functionality. Forrester said this was down to its useful contextual options, such as the ability to add a payee for P2P payments by importing the customer’s contacts from their phone.

La Caixa ranked second, scoring 67 points. It scored heavily in the touch points category with 88 out of 100.

The best of the UK’s banks, NatWest, could muster only 57 points, just above the average. Barclays scored 54 while HSBC props up the table on a dismal 25. Somewhat ignominiously, HSBC got zero out of 100 for transactional features.

Mobile banking services from the UK’s banks, said Forrester, are “notably less advanced” than those offered by banks in North America and elsewhere in Europe.

Nonetheless, Forrester concludes that there’s room for all of the banks evaluated to improve mobile functionality.

“The most obvious missed opportunity among the 15 banks reviewed is that few are making effective use of context to make information more relevant to customers,” said Peter Wannemacher, a Forester analyst and of the report’s authors.

“Sales are another big missed opportunity.” he said. “Some banks aren’t even trying to cross-sell products and services through mobile, and none of the 15 does it effectively.”

The banks evaluated by Forrester were Bank of America, Barclays in the UK, Chase in the US, Citibank in the US, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC in the UK, la Caixa in Spain, Lloyds TSB in the UK, NatWest in the UK, Postbank in Germany, Rabobank in the Netherlands, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Société Générale in France, TD Canada Trust, and Wells Fargo in the US.