While the variety of digital options for opening a bank account, whether they are online or mobile, seems to expand by the week, consumers are still not fully onboard with the idea. Why? HooYu has released a study into the reasons. Patrick Brusnahan reports
HooYu, in its Online Banking Benchmarking Report, asked five banks in the UK on their online account opening success rates. The biggest rise in online account opening attempts was seen by Bank E (all banks were anonymous in the report) which saw a 50% growth on volume from the previous year, though this can be put down to starting from a low base.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Bank B, one of the big four banks in the UK, was able to deliver a sizeable growth in online account opening attempts of 23.1%.
Bank A was not able to give precise data for the previous year, but stated that it was ‘double the equivalent number from this time last year’.
However, the bank stated that its increased online account opening volume was driven through in-branch innovation by installing tablets in its bricks-and-mortar locations. This allowed customers to open accounts digitally without waiting to see a branch member of staff. This accounted for 70% of its ‘new to bank’ current account demand.
Overall, the most popular channel for digital originations was either a desktop or laptop. Applications over smartphones and mobile tablets did record a rise in attempts but not enough to overtake desktops and laptops. No bank was able to state whether Android or iOS devices were driving more of the growth in mobile device account opening.
How well do you really know your competitors?
Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.
Thank you!
Your download email will arrive shortly
Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample
We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form
By GlobalDataHow long does it take?
The average time taken to open account across the five banks was 14 minutes and 24 seconds. Banks A, B, and C beat this industry average with Bank D just missing the cut. Unfortunately, Bank E had a much longer journey to open an account.
Compared to previously acquired data, Banks B and D had significantly decreased the time taken to open an account online.
The shortening of time was attributed to a few factors:
- A better curation of the customer’s digital journey resulting in a shorter form;
- Less pages in the account application form resulting in fewer data packets having to be sent between the customer and the bank. As a result, pages took less time to load, and
- Better UI including more drop downs and fewer free text fields.
Bank A, with its newly installed mobile tablets in branches, said: “On average, this increased time spent opening an account from 45 minutes, when seeing a bank colleague in branch, to 10 minutes.”
Across all the banks, the average completion rate for online account applications is just 53%, meaning that nearly one in two applications is not making it to completion.
While all the respondents stated that they were witnessing slightly lower abandonment rates, potential customers are still abandoning and, as a result, marketing metrics such as Cost Per Acquisition are being inflated.
Bank C stated their lower abandonment rates were ‘due to improvements in KYC processes leading to close to no customers originating online needing to go to a branch to complete the process.”
