Current account switching: TSB the biggest loser; challengers beat big incumbents

The big headline here should be Nationwide taking on 34K accounts -they are an "old incumbent" who are clearly doing something right. The swing to the challengers is pretty low. Shows that customers still prefer to trust their money with established / stable businesses rather than non profit making startups....for now anyway. As they get more accounts and maybe start to make money they will become more appealing. Seems most people like to leave money in traditional bank and transfer monies over to their super slick money alternative.

The net worth of the accounts switched to challenger banks would also be a useful measure. The challenge lying ahead for the challengers is attracting the higher net worth customers. Right now they have an abundance of current accounts that have a salary paid in, no borrowing, balance taken down to almost zero (hence little savings) and then round the cycle again the next month. It is difficult to make money from those customers. 

TSB had the switching bonus of, if I remember rightly, of £125 and still lost out?! That's pretty impressive.

Industry-wide, total switches seem to be less than 50K. That's extremely underwhelming (<0.2%) considering there must be at least 30M current accounts in UK.

Also Andrew Saines + 1. VC-funded fintechs can erode trust very rapidly - an ability that stodgy, old banks totally lack. PayTM Shows How Fintechs Can Lose Trust

Don't forget that many of those moving to Challenger Banks will want to try their service first and so won't use CASS although they may do so later.