You've probably already noticed some big changes that have been made in the world of banking, as well as the emerging race to dominate brand awareness. Mobile and challenger banks have been shaking up the traditional banking industry for the past couple of years, and they’re proving to be extremely popular with consumers.
Unlike the banks that we’ve grown up with, these new online banks don’t have any physical branches — their customers carry out all of their banking on their mobile devices. This set-up offers a handful of benefits, including 24/7 access to one’s bank, strengthened security, and increased customer control.
Over the past few years, these mobile banks have had a huge push in marketing — which has made it seem as though they’re overtaking traditional banks in many ways. But is this really the case? How popular are mobile banks in the UK?
To answer this question and more, we surveyed 1,050 consumers in the UK, and we’ll use the data to reveal how many people are actually aware of these new challenger banks — plus which one is currently reigning supreme.
The State of Mobile Banking in the UK
The UK’s top mobile banks are currently considered to be Starling Bank, Curve, Revolut, and Monzo. When looking at the popularity of these mobile banks, we need to consider two important brand KPIs:
Let’s start with brand awareness.
Brand Awareness
To see which brands our participants were familiar with, we asked a general brand awareness question by compiling the brands into a list — showing both the brand name and logo — and asked consumers which ones they had heard of.
When it comes to the general population answers, Monzo was above all of the rest with 32% of participants saying they’ve heard of the brand before. However, our leader was closely followed by Starling Bank with 26% and Revolut with 14%.
Trailing behind, Curve came last with only 5%. That’s one point for Monzo.
Monzo took yet another point when looking at the answers gathered from an important target audience: Urban Millennials.
With 32%, Monzo topped the chart. And with 24%, Starling Bank remained in second place, and Revolut took third place with 15%. Sadly, only 5% of this target audience had previously heard of Curve.
This same trend was found in our other chosen target audience: 56 to 65-year-old participants.
Curve was still bottom of the pack with 5%, while Revolut hung onto third place with 13%. Starling Bank earned 27% aided brand awareness, coming in second to Monzo’s 29%.
Even though Monzo is generally leading the pack with brand awareness, there’s some obvious traction for the other brands.
Brand Consideration
To measure 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 Curve according to our earlier results, 49% of the general population would consider using the brand. Starling Bank and Revolut both earned 50% brand consideration, while Monzo again took another crown with 55% of respondents saying they would consider using them.
Similarly, with Urban Millennials, Monzo again claimed first place — with 56% having stated that they would consider using the brand’s mobile banking. Next, Revolut and Starling Bank came in at 50%, while Curve claimed a respectable 48%.
But this is where it gets really interesting — Monzo actually came last when we asked 56 to 65-year-olds which brands they would consider using.
Only 45% said they would use Monzo — and all of the other brands beat this figure. 49% said they would opt for Curve, while Starling Bank and Revolut earned 50% each.
Let’s give them all 1 point!
Final Thoughts
All in all, it looks like Monzo reigns supreme with 4 points — although Revolut and Starling Bank didn’t fare too badly with 1 point each.
Though Monzo clearly came out on top for almost all of our questions, the brand may be struggling to connect with 56 to 65-year-olds — as they were this groups’ last choice for brand consideration.
In the end, Monzo appears to be the clear winner. However, our other brands fared quite well for aided brand awareness and brand consideration. Nevertheless, there’s still work that needs to be done if Starling Bank and Revolut want to catch up with Monzo.
After all, you can’t be crowned the winner if consumers can’t remember your name!
Updated by: Cory Schröder on 09.02.22
