The FINANCIAL — Wells Fargo & Company on November 17 reported Retail Banking customer activity data for October 2016.
Tim Sloan, President and Chief Executive Officer noted, “As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, we are providing a monthly update of the trends we are seeing in Retail Banking. In October, we were pleased to see that in general our existing customers were actively using their accounts and valued their relationships with Wells Fargo. As expected, we continued to see declines in new account openings. We remain focused on meeting our customers’ financial needs by providing great service and quality products and will provide our next update in mid-December.”
Mary Mack, head of Community Banking, added, “Trends continued as expected in October, with relatively stable deposit balances and transaction levels, but slower new account openings. Because the sales practices settlement was announced on September 8th, October data reflects the first full month of impact. For comparative purposes it is also important to note that October 2016 had one fewer business day than both September 2016 and October 2015. That being said, we recognize we have work to do and we are focused on strengthening our relationships with existing customers and building new ones with potential customers.”
Key Takeaways
Customer Interactions
Customer interactions with tellers were down 10% from October 2015 (year-over-year “YoY”) as customers increasingly transacted through mobile channels, with digital sessions up 7% YoY
Branch banker interactions were down from September 2016 (linked month “LM”) and YoY primarily driven by a slowdown in new account openings
Deposit Balances and Accounts
Average consumer and small business deposit balances were in line LM and up 8% YoY
The number of primary checking account customers, who are by definition the most active customers, was in line LM and up 3.9% YoY
Consumer account opens were down 27% LM and 44% YoY primarily due to a full month impact of customer reaction to the sales practices settlement and reduced marketing activities
Customer-initiated account closures were up modestly, 3%, both LM and YoY
Debit and Credit Cards
Customers continued to actively use their debit and credit cards
Debit point-of-sale active cards and transactions were both up LM and YoY
Point-of-sale active credit card accounts were up YoY and were unchanged from September 2016; purchase volume was up 8% YoY and in line with September 2016; credit card balances outstanding were up both LM and YoY
New credit card applications continued their downward trend with applications down 35% LM and 50% YoY primarily due to reduced marketing activities and a full month impact of customer reaction to the sales practices settlement
Customer Experience Surveys
Customer loyalty scores were down both LM and YoY, with scores showing some improvement from lows seen early in October
Survey results of satisfaction with most recent visit were 73.9% in October, down modestly LM and down from 77.4% in October 2015
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