But the story is not all one of doom and gloom. There are a few winners, principally Halifax, Santander and Nationwide, in that order.
In the first four quarters for which detailed stats are to hand, Halifax ranked top of all UK current account providers for net switchers; since late 2013, its total current account numbers have grown by more than a net 250,000 customers.

And Halifax looks set to consolidate its position as the prime beneficiary of seven day switching by teaming up with the clever guys at Jumio, to give itself a key advantage in improving the customer experience.

Customers looking to switch their accounts to Halifax can now speed up the process by uploading a photo of their debit card from their smartphone or tablet.

The Halifax ‘snap to switch’ tool means that consumers submit their existing bank details without having to go through the rigmarole of populating the information on a form.

Using the bank’s optimised tool populates the switch from bank account fields automatically.
The innovation is timely and will prove to be popular with more and more customers looking to switch accounts from their tablet or smartphone.

As David Pope,European marketing director at Jumio told me, ‘snap to switch’ will enable the customer to save about 40 key strokes.
"The quicker that customers gets across the finishing line means that more and more customers will complete the switching process."

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Two immediate thoughts spring to mind. Once the Halifax/Jumio innovation is seen to be a winner, expect to see this extended to sister brands Lloyds and Bank of Scotland.

Secondly, it is refreshing to see technology, hitherto previously used successfully by online retailers, become adopted by financial institutions.

Aside from the Halifax deal, Jumio’s technology is increasingly being used by a growing number of financial institutions to authenticate customer documents.

Meantime, Jumio has released results from its latest Mobile Consumer Insights study, a look at user behaviour and transactions on mobile, and a follow-up to its 2013 study of the same name.

If you have not had sight of the report, I commend it warmly. Conducted online by Harris Interactive, the latest survey found that more than one-half of US smartphone owners (56%) have abandoned a mobile transaction. Pretty dire – but a slight improvement from last year’s 66% finding.

Bluntly, as mobile transactions soar, so do abandoned purchases. That means revenue is being lost due to a lousy customer experience.

One positive for financial institutions is that they are from the worst placed compared with other verticals. Less than one in four of those surveyed (23%) said that they had abandoned the transaction while applying for a financial services account (e.g. opening an account, money transfer).

By contrast, the corresponding figures for retail/apparel were 60% while food and travel both scored a pretty dismal 41%.