Jakarta Post

The Hidden 'Run' on Banks and Digital Services

Banks need to innovate to keep their customers.

By Maureen Burns and Thomas Olsen

Published on April 02, 2015
min read


This article originally appeared in the Jakarta Post. Banks, your customers are quietly leaving you. When Bain & Company surveyed 83,000 customers in 22 countries recently, we found that more than one-third of them bought a banking product from their primary bank’s competitors during the past year. The rate of defection reached an average 47 percent in developing countries. In Indonesia 44 percent of customers went to a different bank to obtain a credit card, buy insurance, or apply for an auto loan or another financial product. If that many bank customers were closing their current accounts each year — completely defecting — bankers would be up in arms. Yet the hidden defection, often involving more lucrative products, goes largely unnoticed by banks because they seldom know their customers were shopping in the first place or that they lost the business. This trend is accelerating as digital startups and specialist firms, less encumbered by creaky old IT systems and a thicket of banking regulations, offer better, simpler solutions and make it easy for people to find them. Strong demand for peer-to-peer lender Lending Club’s recent initial public stock offering is just the latest sign of investors’ and customers’ confidence in alternative business models. Meanwhile, banks’ classic advantages — personal relationships between bank managers and customers, big branch network and a reputation for security — have been crumbling. Read the full article in the Jakarta Post.

This article originally appeared in the Jakarta Post.

Banks, your customers are quietly leaving you. When Bain & Company surveyed 83,000 customers in 22 countries recently, we found that more than one-third of them bought a banking product from their primary bank’s competitors during the past year.

The rate of defection reached an average 47 percent in developing countries. In Indonesia 44 percent of customers went to a different bank to obtain a credit card, buy insurance, or apply for an auto loan or another financial product.

If that many bank customers were closing their current accounts each year — completely defecting — bankers would be up in arms.

Yet the hidden defection, often involving more lucrative products, goes largely unnoticed by banks because they seldom know their customers were shopping in the first place or that they lost the business.

This trend is accelerating as digital startups and specialist firms, less encumbered by creaky old IT systems and a thicket of banking regulations, offer better, simpler solutions and make it easy for people to find them.

Strong demand for peer-to-peer lender Lending Club’s recent initial public stock offering is just the latest sign of investors’ and customers’ confidence in alternative business models.

Meanwhile, banks’ classic advantages — personal relationships between bank managers and customers, big branch network and a reputation for security — have been crumbling.

Read the full article in the Jakarta Post.