Retail banking in the Fintech Age

For the last day or so Revolut Bank (or more accurately, non-bank) has been in trouble with data privacy advocates, singletons, vegans, users and now possible even the regulators

For the new "Challenger banks" this is a very bad idea.

We have been researching perceptions of Challenger Banks vs Traditional Banks from October 2018 to January 2019, but in a nutshell, perception matters for capturing and retaining customers, especially in an age when 90%+ of people go online for recommendations.It also matters more for the Challenger banks, who don't have large service portfolios - so they need to be seen to be really, really excellent at what they do. Implying they spy on their users to the extent the regulator is interested (never mind the rest of the fallout) is a bad idea.

Revolut have not done as well in the perception stakes as their main competotor, Monzo - another Challenger bank - as the chart above shows (the faster the rise in the line, the better), their perception is lagging and is not much better than the Traditional banks, with all their history dogging their steps. This latest episode is not going to help (and may well point to deeper issues)....

More analysis on the DataSwarm site over here