Brand Awareness Key Insights into UK Mobile Banking
You have probably already noticed that there are some big changes being made in the world of banking, leading to a new race for brand awareness. Mobile and challenger banks have been shaking up the traditional banking industry for the past couple of years, and they are proving to be extremely popular. Unlike the usual banks that we have all grown up with, these new online ones don’t have any physical branches. Their customers carry out all of their banking on their mobile device.
This is known as mobile banking. This term refers to all of the transactions and account monitoring that can be carried out on a mobile device, whether it’s a smartphone or tablet. Right now, customers can do all kinds on mobile banking apps, such as pay bills, transfer money between accounts, and set up new direct debits. Even though the majority of traditional banks now offer this as an extra service, the challenger banks offer this as the sole way their customers can bank with them.
Recently there has been a huge drive in the marketing of these mobile banks, which has made it seem like they are starting to overtake traditional bank firms. Is this really the case, though? We thought it would be interesting to look into just how many people are actually aware of these new challenger banks and which one is the current reigning. To find all this out, we surveyed 1,050 people to find out their thoughts.
Mobile Banking in the UK
Unaided Brand Awareness
The current top mobile banks are currently considered to be N26, Starling Bank, Curve, Revolut, and Monzo. So, we decided to find out if any of these mobile banks are top of mind in the UK.
We asked, “ When you think of mobile banks, which brands come to mind?” The general population answers show that Monzo is the best-known brand as 10% said that they have heard of it. Next up was Starling Bank at 4%. Only 2% of the general population had heard of Revolut, while no one answered with N26 or Curve. Monzo, therefore, kicks off our survey with 1 point on the leaderboard.
We then decided to look at the results from urban millennials. The pattern was very similar-Monzo came out top with 9% while Starling Bank inched into second place with 3%, just above Revolut’s 3%. None of the urban millennials had heard of Curve or N26. Again, that’s 1 point for Monzo.
The pattern continued when we asked 56–65-year-olds as well. As with the other two groups, Curve and N26 were left with 0%. Monzo came top with 10% while Starling Bank and Revolut followed with 5% and 2% respectively.
At the end of the unaided questions, it is 3 points to Monzo who are top of the leaderboard.
Aided Brand Awareness
Next, we decided to see if an aided brand awareness question would jog our participants’ memories. So, we compiled the brands into a list with the brand name and logo and asked them which ones they had heard of. None of the brands scored 0% this time, thank goodness!
When it comes to the general population answers, Monzo was still above all of the rest with 32% of participants saying they’ve heard of the brand before. This was closely followed by Starling Bank with 26% and Revolut with 14%. Still trailing behind slightly, N26 came in fourth with only 6% of respondents having heard of it before. Curve came last with only 5%. That’s one more point for Monzo.
Monzo took another point when the urban millennials were asked the same question. It topped the others with 32%. With 26%, Starling Bank was still in second place. Revolut took third place with 15%. N26 seemed to do slightly better with the millennials as 7% said that they’d heard of it before, but only 5% had previously heard of Curve.
This trend continued with the 56–65-year-old participants as well. Curve and N26 were still bottom of the pack with 5% and 6% respectively while Revolut hung onto third place with 13% of respondents having heard of the brand before. Starling Bank’s 27% was pipped to first place by Monzo’s 29%.
Even though Monzo is still leading all of the others after these aided questions, there is some obvious traction for the other brands.
Brand Consideration
Next, it’s time to look at brand consideration. We gave all of our survey participants the same list of brands and asked which ones they would consider using. This is where the results start to get interesting.
Even though not many people had heard of them according to our earlier results, 49% of the general population would consider using Curve and 50% would consider N26. Starling Bank and Revolut also gained 50% while Monzo took another crown with 55% of respondents saying they would consider using them.
Similarly, with the urban millennials, Monzo got 1 point as 56% stated that they would consider using its mobile banking. N26, Revolut, and Starling Bank were all on 50% while Curve came in last place with 48%.
Check this out, though-Monzo actually came last when we asked 56–65-year-olds which brands they would consider. Only 45% said they would use Monzo; all of the other brands beat this. 49% said they would opt for Curve while Starling Bank, N26, and Revolut all gained 50% of the votes. Let’s give them all 1 point.
Mobile Banking: The Results Are In
All in all, it looks like Monzo reigns supreme with 5 points, although Revolut, N26, and Starling Bank didn’t come away too badly with 1 point each. Monzo managed to come out top in almost all of our questions; the only time it didn’t was with the 56–65-year-olds.
Even though Monzo appears to be the clear winner, the other brands did quite well for aided brand awareness and brand consideration. There is still some work that they need to do, though. After all, you can’t be king if consumers can’t remember your name!
Find out here how you can improve brand awareness.
Originally published at https://www.latana.com.
