For traditional banks, many mass market customers who don’t have a full relationship with them are simply unprofitable. That’s in large measure because fee income is in decline as competitive and regulatory pressures tighten. As a result, many banks are focusing on the affluent and mass affluent segments, but they’re finding that customers in these segments are hard to acquire at scale.
How hard? According to the Curinos Distribution Analyzer, only 4% of branches can generate above-average new-to-bank checking acquisition with above-average balances within the first month of a new relationship. At the same time, fully 45% of branches generate below-average performance across both dimensions (see chart).
The hard truth? There are very few branches that can generate both volume and balance quality. This strongly suggests that trying to pursue a more affluent strategy through the existing branch network can be a very heavy lift indeed.
New-to-Bank Checking Account Unit Sales and
Average Balance per Month per Branch
High new-checking volume comes with low balances, and vice versa.
