Take a bow Santander, Halifax and Nationwide, the big winners in the latest account switching stats. Douglas Blakey writes
A monthly record 124,000 plus UK customers switched their current account in March, highlighting the success of a new ad campaign at the start of the year promoting the seven day switching initiative.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Only around 2.5% of current account users switch per year; by contrast 3.4 million UK customers switched their electricity provider in 2015 and 2.7 million switched gas provider.
However, for the first quarter of 2016, 309,678 switches took place, up 20% compared to the fourth quarter of 2015 and 10% more than the same period last year.
The ad campaign was badly needed with account switching rates remaining stubbornly low. Overall, only 1.06 million switches were completed in the 12 months to end March 2016 compared with 1.13m in the prior 12 months.
And the winners: well, the most up to date data on a bank by bank basis covers the three month period to end September last year and Santander is the big winner by a distance.
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 GlobalDataBetween July and September, Santander attracted an additional net 51,000 customers ahead of Nationwide (+15,000) and Halifax (+11,000).
The only other brands to show a net gain were TSB (+3,300) and Tesco Bank (+600).
Biggest losers: well RBS NatWest lost over 2,000 per week (down more than 27,000 for the quarter) just ahead of Barclays (-25,000) and Lloyds (-10,000).
Switching figures released in the third and fourth quarters this year will be of significant interest given recent product changes at Santander and RBS.
In January, the monthly cost of Santander’s 123 current account more than doubled from £2 to £5 a month while last October, RBS launched a 123 type product, the RBS Reward account. The latter product gives customers 3% cashback on seven household bills for £3 a month.
Efma and Capgemini report on customer experience
As RBI goes to press, the fifth annual World Retail Banking Report from CapGemini and EFMA comes to hand.
As ever, the report is a good read.
Some positives: retail banks have accelerated their drive towards optimising the customer experience and that has resulted in an increase of 2.9% in the CapGemini Customer Experience Index (CEI).
As for some negative findings-take your pick. Key takeaways include one killer. Despite the rise in the CEI, profitable customer behaviour has improved only marginally.
The report also discusses the highly topical issue of fintechs and their relationship with financial institutions, the topic for debate by the by at the upcoming Digital Banking Club Live Debate in June.
According to CapGemini, fintechs are making increasingly significant inroads with customers, yet the vast majority of banks admit they are not adequately prepared to manage this emerging threat.
The report states that nearly two-thirds of the 16,000 retail banking customers polled are now using fintech products or services, and are much more likely to refer friends and family to their fintech provider (55%) than to their bank (38%).
Nearly two in three of the banks execs surveyed by CapGemini say that they need to view fintechs as partners while only 18% say that they plan to acquire fintechs or their technology.
It will be interesting to see how the stats in this report compares to the attendees at the DBC debate when they are polled.
