This Month in Retail Banking
In today’s evolving and highly competitive digital environment, maintaining brand equity is becoming increasingly important to financial institutions, and increasingly challenging. That’s why several of them – from consumer payments providers to regional and national banks – have recently taken on a whole new brand identity. A number of incumbents have attempted to move away from corporate big-bank imagery, while fintechs – like Revolut and Cash App – have recently reinvented their brand image. It’s an effort to maintain engagement among today’s customers and digital natives who are constantly exposed to the latest branding trends in online advertising and marketing.
As banking becomes increasingly digital, Curinos agrees that transformational UX innovation and capabilities are more important than ever and need to be stitched into how the brand presents itself. Curinos’ Marketing Analyzer research, for example, revealed that marketing and branding were the primary drivers of checking acquisitions in 2022, overtaking originations through branches. And as more challengers and digital banking spinoffs enter the market, we’re seeing that brand distinctiveness correlates with efficiency gains. Highly distinctive brands – those that score well across six attributes – were 62% more cost-effective in acquiring new checking customers than those with low distinctiveness.
With budgets tight, rebranding or a brand refresh may seem like an extravagance, but the alternative could be worse – a drop in engagement and deposits heading to a more active, and appealing, competitor. Curinos believes that financial institutions need to look on their brand as a living organism. Now may be an opportune time to gauge its relative strengths and weaknesses and to consider investing in a refresh.
