Experts spoke about the "trapped" banks

In the first half of 2022, the share of users of banking applications decreased by only 0.2%. Banks were able to keep the audience despite the sanctions, but "drew themselves into a trap" thanks to good services,

Sanctions by Western countries against Russian banks have not led to a sharp decrease in the availability of mobile banking for customers. Analysts of the consulting company Yakov and Partners (former McKinsey in RUSSIA) and the FINIX YnP service came to this conclusion in a joint study, which RBC got acquainted with. However, lenders have another problem - due to overdeveloped digital services, they are actually driving themselves into a trap, as there are fewer and fewer barriers to changing banks.

The study analyzed Russian retail banks with a combined customer base of more than 110 million people. Active customers are those who have used online banking within 30 days prior to the reporting date. The data was obtained from the banks themselves, but the study covers only the period of 2021 - the first half of 2022. However, the applications of the banks that fell under the sanctions began to disappear from mobile stores even then.

According to the results of the second quarter of 2022, 61.6% of active clients of credit institutions used mobile banking. “Thus, the introduction of restrictions had practically no effect on this channel and the decrease amounted to just over 0.2 p.p. from the peak reached in early 2022,” the study says. Analysts recalled that this happened despite the disappearance of a number of applications from stores such as the App Store and GOOGLE Play.

In general, according to the results of the first half of 2022, 66.1% of active customers used online channels. At the same time, only a mobile bank was used by 59.9% of clients, a mobile bank and Internet banking - 1.7%, only Internet banking - 4.5%. For comparison: at the end of December 2021, these figures were 64.6, 60.3, 1.4 and 2.9%, respectively. Thus, over the past six months, the share of those who use only Internet banking has grown, but not significantly - by 1.6 p.p.

The App Store and Google Play app stores are deleting applications from Russian banks against which sanctions are imposed by Western countries due to the start of a special military operation in Ukraine. Sberbank, VTB, Promsvyazbank, Alfa-Bank, Sovcombank, Otkritie, Gazprombank, Rosselkhozbank, Novikombank, MCB, UBRD, Tinkoff Bank, Rosbank, Uralsib, Zenit, Bank St. Petersburg" and others. The official applications of many sanctioned credit organizations have been removed from the App Store or Google Play. At the same time, the Android operating system allows you to install applications directly - without downloading in the store. iOS smartphones do not have this feature. However, since the removal of official applications in the App Store, their “clones” have appeared, repeating the functionality.

How did banks survive the crisis?

Nine out of ten banks examined in the study increased their customer bases over 18 months (2021 and the first half of 2022) by 21%, to 110.5 million people. The growth of the total active client base during this period amounted to more than 7.5%, it reached 28.4 million people. According to the Bank of Russia, there are already more than seven open bank accounts per inhabitant of the country (including term deposits), and this number is growing by 5% per year. According to the authors of the study, each client has valid agreements on banking products, on average, at least two and a half banks. “Paradoxically, in the fight for customers, Russian banks not only created advanced everyday products and digital channels, but partly drove themselves into a trap, lowering barriers for customers to move from bank to bank,” Yakov & Partners experts say. According to their calculations, every fifth active client for banks is a new one, and every third leaves the bank and loses its active status in a year. In the first, “crisis” half of 2022, the share of transactionally active retail customers who regularly use bank accounts to pay for goods and services increased by 4.5 percentage points, reaching 61.2% of the active customer base. On average, one transactionally active client spent 55.1 thousand rubles per month. (growth for six months was 6%), performing 24.1 operations (growth 1%). “The share of non-cash transactions in Russia has been one of the highest in the world for many years. And in 2022, despite the departure of international payment systems, sanctions restricting a number of transactions, and the expectation by some experts of an outflow of customers from the banking system as a whole, the growth of the transaction banking business in Russia continued,” the study says. According to the Central Bank, the share of non-cash payments in retail turnover in 2022 reached 78.1% against 73.4% in 2021. Readpioneer product.by It won't get better: foreign banks continue to tighten the screws for Russians What is happening with the frozen assets of Russian investors What are the types of financial directors. And who to hire Mother of chatbots:

In the structure of debit transactions, there was a noticeable replacement of cash transactions by non-cash transfers against the backdrop of the development of the Fast Payment System. Thus, according to the results of the first half of 2022, the share of payments was 34%, the share of money transfers - 33%, the share of cash withdrawals - 34%. At the end of 2021, these figures were 35, 23 and 41%, respectively. Analysts recorded a decrease in the share of active customers who use bank branches. This figure has been decreasing for five consecutive quarters and now stands at 16.6%. For six months, it fell by 2.5 p.p. ATMs are also becoming less popular - only 35.3% of customers use them. At the same time, the number of transactions per ATM decreased by 20% over six months. Despite the reduction in the share of active clients in branches, the actual load on branches and employees is growing due to an increase in the total number of active clients, as well as outstripping network reduction rates. “In general, over the 18 months since the end of 2020, the number of active clients per branch has grown from 7 thousand to 8.8 thousand people,” the authors of the study add.