While the indications are that bank customers want a better banking experience, it's still not clear that the cohorts of emerging digital-only "neobanks" will benefit. This was one of the conclusions drawn by Kate Wilson, research director for Australia and New Zealand at consulting firm RFi Group, in a presentation yesterday at CEBIT Australia, the annual technology expo in Sydney. For starters, very few customers consider a digital-only "neobank" to be their main bank (defined by Wilson as the bank where their salaries and wages are paid). More encouraging for the emerging digital only players, RFI found that neobank customers in the UK market are typically younger and more affluent - and more likely to switch banks. They are also more likely to be in the main cities - in the UK this means London. They are also more likely to be migrants, which works in favour of challenger banks such as Atom, Monzo and Starling as they allow new customers to open their accounts in minutes rather than weeks with High Street brands - an important factor for people who have no other bank accounts. Another reason is cost: neobanks are cheaper than traditional banks - and easier to use. Extrapolating some of these findings to Australia, she noted that currently less than 10 per cent of potential customers are aware of neobank brands: "a bank like 86 400 had 3 per cent awareness [among potential customers]." Even when given a high level description of what a neobank does, and being asked if they would consider using one, just 4 per cent of customers agreed. This finding was slightly higher among customers of existing Australian online banks such as ING and UBank. However, these customers have already chosen a digital-only bank, and on some measures ING now has the fifth highest market share of all retail banks in Australia. Similarly ING consistently has one of the highest satisfaction rates among its customers. "In the UK we've seen consumers switching to neobanks because they are low cost. In contrast, in Australia - and taking ING as an example - there are already a lot of low fee or no fee products, or fee waivers on offer," Wilson said. "Also, switching is incredibly rare. Only 50 per cent of Australians have ever changed banks, and if consumers are ever going to switch they will have done so by the time they are 35 as life changes happen in the years the age range 25 to 34 - getting