The data: Overall bank customer satisfaction stagnated in 2025 YoY as the customer experience weakened in H2 across phone, branch, online, and automated channels, per J.D. Power.

Digging into the data: Customers are moving assets to financial institutions (FIs) besides their primary bank. The movement of deposits per se does not indicate the loss of a customer. But it is a lost sale, a lost opportunity to collect more customer data, and the diminished ability to to sell more products to that customer:

• The average checking customer now holds three deposit accounts at different FIs.
• Twenty percent of retail bank customers moved money from their primary bank in the prior three months, up from 17% YoY.
• Among the groups most likely to move money were affluent/mass-affluent consumers (25%), financially healthy consumers (24%), and consumers under 40 (23%).

Zoom out: Earlier research showed that many consumers were opening new bank, credit card, and investment accounts and migrating some of their financial activities. Among new accounts, 52% of checking and 48% of investment accounts were additional, and 65% of new credit cards were additional.

Implications for banks: Consumers spreading deposits is concerning, because they are highly likely to have deposits through their primary FI: 85.1% have a checking account and 82.3% a savings account at the FI they depend on most, according to our US Banking Consumer Trust 2026 benchmark. That implies a potential direct deposit relationship, which is very sticky and foretells products purchased at that institution.

FIs should have a rough idea of why consumers may be moving deposits. According to our US Mobile Banking Emerging Features Benchmark 2025, the most common reasons were mobile banking capabilities (36%), online banking capabilities (29%), and customer service (27%). The work banks have to do is clear.