Banks struggle to increase ‘share of wallet’


Bank customers do not want to increase the ‘share of wallet’ with individual banks, but would rather keep their funds diversified across a range of providers, according to Roy Morgan’s latest Single Source survey.
The survey, which questions over 50,000 consumers per annum, found that large banks capture just over half of their customers’ overall banking wallet value.
In the year to November 2017, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia had the highest ‘share of wallet,’ being entrusted with 58.6 per cent of their customers’ funds. BankWest had the second highest, with 56.2 per cent.
Banks struggled to increase their ‘share of wallet’ though, with the ten largest consumer banks remaining largely steady in what portion of their customers’ overall funds they hold over the last four years.
In that time, five of those banks fractionally increased their share by up to 3 per cent. Four decreased their share by 2.6 per cent or less, and the Bank of Queensland’s share fell 7.6 per cent.
As the graph above shows, despite these changes the ‘share of wallet’ stayed largely consistent at a bit over 50 per cent.
Norman Morris, Roy Morgan industry communication director said that there were many reasons banks had struggled to increase their share of customer’s funds.
“Attempts to cross sell banking products to existing customers in order to increase ‘share of wallet’ have had little impact, most likely due to a number of reasons, including insufficient benefit to consumers to consolidate banking with one bank, increased competition from new and existing providers, diversification of risk and general apathy and effort regarding changing providers,” he said.
Morris said that the average consumer engages with around four financial services providers to cover their full range of needs.
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