Neobanks accelerate in the race to take over part of the banking pie with some players who are already fighting for the top of the podium. A year ago, Revolut bypassed CaixaBank and Santander in opening new relationships or accounts with clients, and it has also just won over BBVA. The financial app, which already works with 3.5 million users in Spain and is enriching its catalog with products such as paid accounts, Bizum payment or the next foray into mortgages, accounts for 19.8% of new registrations. industry clients. A year ago it was 12.8% and just 0.1% in 2020.
They are followed by BBVA, with 12.9%, which has now seen its leadership displaced; Santander, with 12.5%; CaixaBank, with 9.9%, and ING, with 5.5% of new accounts or relationships with clients. These are some of the conclusions of the “Study of the Financial Behavior of Individuals in Spain 2024” prepared by Grupo Inmark, a market research company specialized in financial analysis for several decades. For the report, it has conducted interviews with 12,000 people over 18 years old and with banking services, a census much higher than the 1,000-2,000 that are usually carried out, for example, for voting intention surveys in elections.
7% are looking for a new bank
According to the analysis, 6.8% of Spaniards have started a financial relationship in the last year, such as opening an account, contracting a service or the first product with an entity, one of the highest percentages in recent years. a situation like this between 5-5.5% of the population.
The interest rate situation, with the increase in the price of money from 0% to 4.5% by the European Central Bank (ECB) and its subsequent de-escalation, in successive reductions, to the current 3.25%, fuels that proactivity in the search for alternatives in other entities. Small entities, especially fintech and neobanks, have added to their catalog deposits and remunerated accounts that do not appear in the showcase of big banks; and in different cases they compete with more aggressive offers on mortgages and with discounts on cards or the absence of expenses when using them abroad.
“Since the pandemic, the diversification of consumers’ banking relationship is a fact. This change is motivated by two aspects, by the application of the commissions that entities have been applying to clients and by the growing rise of neobanks” explains the director of Multiclient Studies at Grupo Inmark, Ana Delia Revilla.
Its capacity to reach is paid for by growing digitalization. Even today, 42.1% of customers claim to have opened their new account in a branch, although this contracting is now much lower than the 74.3% it represented in 2020 and more than half are closed through the web and app. And there, neobanks capture 53% of these new registrations in digital channels, indicates the Inmark study. According to the Inmark expert, this “is based on an online relationship based on a simple operation of queries and transactions, accompanied by an attractive and commission-free user experience, which especially influences the younger sector (18 to 30 years old). ), as is the case with Revolut.” Economic conditions “continue to be the main reason for choosing new relationships,” he adds. “Part of Revolut’s success lies in the fact that there are people who start a new financial relationship because they want to travel abroad and the neobank offers very competitive conditions in the exchange rate,” he explains. “In the medium term, the challenge faced neobanks face is to increase the product portfolio and the remote contracting of more complex products, such as, for example, mortgages or loans,” he specifies.
The challenge: sell more to a client
And incorporating more clients or closing a greater number of operations per se does not imply greater profitability or greater market share in the business. To improve positions and for the numbers to turn out better, entities must strengthen relationships and reinforce cross-selling, a strategy where the focus is mainly on large banks that pay for the connection with incentive programs such as plans that exempt commissions. or they reward the use of certain services or products such as card purchases.
The same study confirms that large banks maintain market penetration. CaixaBank works with 39.4% of banking services clients, although it has seen that weight diluted from the 40.9% of users who mentioned the bank in 2023. BBVA rises, with 26.8% from 25.6 % previous; and Santander from 22.9 to 24.%; like Sabadell (scale from 9.8 to 10.2%) or Revolut, here it goes from 5.1 to 8.5%. When citizens are asked what the main bank is, 27.9% mention CaixaBank, 17.5% BBVA, 15.3% Santander, 8.6% rural savings banks, 6.4% to ING and 5.9% to Sabadell, without Revolut appearing among the top 13 entities – only 0.3% of the total mention it.
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