Curinos + CBA CMO Summit 2025
Curinos + CBA CMO Summit 2025—7 Key Takeaways
Curinos, in partnership with Consumer Bankers Association, welcomed marketing executives from more than 35 financial institutions to its CMO Summit for 2024, in Chicago, April 29 and 30. Curinos and guest speakers delved into the key drivers of growth in 2025, including the future of marketing and the revolution in marketing decisioning. From the presentations and discussions, here are seven timely themes that resonated throughout the event.
1. Acquiring new checking customers through branches is more expensive than ever.
Even though the quality of these accounts is vastly superior to those acquired digitally, in terms of both balances and retention, the economics are barely tenable: every branch-sourced new-to-bank household costs an average of $2,200. That’s because 60% of all bank branches open only about 15 new-to-bank checking accounts per month, thanks to changing consumer behaviors and the inexorable rise of direct players. And only one to two of these accounts exceed $10,000 in balances even though they end up representing more than 80% of all new deposit balances. Given today’s expense of the branch system, that means each of these more affluent accounts costs as much as $26,667 to acquire!
Average Relationship Balance Distribution for New-to-Bank Acquisition
2. Wallet fragmentation has made maximizing value from existing customers the new battlefield.
Curinos’ 10th annual US Shopper Survey measured the behavior of the 20 million consumers who switched checking providers last year. Fully half of them reported that they now have four or more checking relationships, up by a staggering amount from the 7% reported in pre-pandemic 2019. This is a direct result of the inroads non-traditional digital providers have made, and it amplifies the need for traditional banks to deepen their existing relationships through personalization. That’s because customer value compounds as individuals progress through financial stages, so these providers need to be sure they’re getting the at-bats at the right time to capitalize, rather than ceding these opportunisms to other in-wallet competitors.
Key Consumer Financial Stages
3. Along with marketing investment and perceived convenience, differentiation is key to achieving outsized acquisition of primary customers.
The most distinctive providers exhibit significantly lower acquisition costs and deposit betas than average. But the levers of distinctiveness vary by segment. “Serves all my banking needs,” for example, scores highest for Paycheck to Paycheck customers—likely because the range of their banking needs is relatively narrow—and lowest for Affluent customers, whose range is broader. “Is a good value” grows in importance with a customer’s wherewithal, indicating the motivation to maximize the cost/benefit tradeoff as one’s financial standing increases.
Primacy Drivers by Segment
4. Some of the most important elements of marketing and management are timeless.
The definition of marketing continues to be, quite simply, understanding and meeting customer requirements. That’s according to guest speaker Rishad Tobaccowala, who also shared the three most important questions from the C-suite that haven’t changed in his many decades of marketing and advertising consulting:
- How do I stay relevant in changing times?
- Do I have the right organizational design and partners?
- How do you manage change?
These four attributes of successful organizations are equally enduring:
- Excellence – product, talent, financials
- Growth mindset
- Collaboration
- Open & honest communication (Having the courage to call that brown lump on the table what it is, not a brownie)
On change? Nobody likes it, says Rishad, but irrelevance is worse!
5. These three demographic shifts will change banking, and society.
Rustom Dastoor, Head of Marketing & Communications for the Americas at Mastercard, spoke of these three major demographic shifts based on Mastercard research that will redefine banking, and society at large, well into the future:
- The transfer of wealth to women, who will manage $35 trillion in personal financial assets—41% of the total—by 2030.
- The rise of Gen Z. They are the banking customers of tomorrow, have grown up exclusively in the digital age and can spot phoniness a mile away.
- The growing influence of Hispanics, whose ranks will increase from 20% of the population today to 30% in 2050. Culture drives their behavior, and they tend to be more experimental than the national average and more entrepreneurial.
6. Relationships aren’t linear: Customers don’t go from awareness to account opening to cross-sell in a neat little arc.
One day they’ll log in three times, then nothing for two weeks. They may click a savings offer but open a CD. They talk to a rep about a loan, but apply six months later. This is the nature of a banking relationship today. It’s messy. It’s dynamic. And most important, it doesn’t follow the mapped journey. That’s why the tools built around linear paths—journeys, flows, pre-set sequences—eventually break down. MapQuest was a great replacement for printed maps, but it took the crowdsourcing of Waze to provide a dynamic, near-real-time solution. So it is for customer journeys. AI-fueled decision intelligence learns, listens, and adapts and, when necessary, reacts. It’s changed the game completely.
Relationships Aren’t Linear
7. Fintechs continue to achieve significant share gains against all types of competitors.
According to Curinos’ 10th annual Curinos US Shopper Survey, fintechs have vaulted from 35% of all switching checking customers in 2021 to 47% in 2024. And they’ve done it mostly at the expense of national banks, which now hold only about a 21% share of switchers, down from 31%. The share growth of even direct banks has stalled. Much of the fintech growth can be attributed to the Paycheck to Paycheck segment, which represented nearly 60% of the 20 million switchers in 2024. But the huge caveat to that number is that P2P represented a scant 1% of all switching balances.
Year Primary Checking Account Opened | by Primary Bank Type
Note(s): Payment Focused apps (Cash App, PayPal, Venmo) were not included in the shopper as a pre-listed digital choice until 2023. Respondents were able to write in the options as their primary bank in previous shoppers
Source(s): Curinos Customer Knowledge | 2021-2024 US Shopper Survey | Q10: In which year did you open your primary checking account (the checking account you use the most today)? | Curinos Analysis
