Bank shareholders short on customer loyalty

While National Australia Bank has marketed itself in the past as "breaking up" with the other Big Four banks, most of its own shareholders aren't too enamoured with NAB, if a recent survey by Roy Morgan Research is any guide to loyalty.

Roy Morgan looked at the proportions of shareholders holding shares in the major banks who were also customers of those banks, to get a measure of their loyalty. And while more than 1.5 million Australians have shares in the Big Four banks, on average only 41 per cent of each bank's shareholders are customers of that bank.

CBA shareholders have the highest customer loyalty among the Big Four, but even so, less than half (49 per cent) are CBA customers. The other major banks dealt with by CBA shareholders are Westpac (26 per cent), ANZ (22 per cent) and NAB (20 per cent).

Westpac is the next best performer, with almost 40 per cent of its shareholders being customers of the bank (although almost 30 per cent are CBA customers). And just over one-third of the shareholders of ANZ and NAB are customers of those banks (37 per cent and 34 per cent, respectively).

"The fact that such a low proportion of major banks' shareholders are customers of the bank where they hold shares is somewhat surprising. This indicates there is a disconnect between investment and banking decisions," said Norman Morris, industry communications director at Roy Morgan Research.

"Given that these shareholders are likely to have a favourable opinion of their bank from an investment perspective, the next step is to convert them into customers. Finding the right inducement and making shareholders aware of it is now the challenge," Morris said.

Past incentives have had limited success. Currently NAB offers benefits for shareholders with a minimum of 500 shares, while the other major banks do not appear to offer shareholder benefits, according to Roy Morgan.