The average retail bank customer now keeps money at three different financial institutions. One in five moved funds out of their primary bank in the past three months, according to J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Retail Banking Satisfaction Study, up from 17% a year earlier. It’s one of the more sobering bank marketing stats out there, because it turns marketing’s job from acquisition into retention.
The 20 stats below provide insights every bank marketer should see. Some come from research firms studying personalization and video across industries. Others come from SundaySky’s own work with banks building customer communications around personalized video.
Customer switching and loyalty stats
1. The average bank customer holds accounts at three different financial institutions. J.D. Power’s 2026 study, based on more than 107,000 customer responses, found that primary-bank relationships no longer come with exclusivity attached. Customers routinely split deposits, and every other institution holding one of those accounts competes for the full relationship.
2. Twenty percent of bank customers moved money away from their primary bank in the past quarter, up from 17% a year earlier. The rate climbs higher among the customers banks most want to keep: 23% for those under 40, 25% for the affluent and mass-affluent segment, and 24% among financially healthy customers. These are important segments marketing can’t afford to lose. (Also from J.D. Power’s 2026 study.)
3. National banks’ problem-resolution satisfaction climbed 49 points in a year, while midsize banks’ fell 27 points. That swing comes from the same J.D. Power 2026 study cited above. How a bank communicates during a problem is swinging loyalty as hard as any campaign. Midsize banks without the resources to match that shift are losing ground fastest.
The personalization gap in banking
4. Seventy-one percent of consumers expect personalized interactions from the companies they do business with. McKinsey’s research on personalization shows this expectation is now the baseline of the customer relationship, not a premium feature reserved for high-value accounts.
5. Seventy-six percent of consumers get frustrated when personalization doesn’t happen, the same McKinsey research found. That frustration carries a real retention cost: customers who don’t feel understood by their bank are the ones most likely to quietly move money to a competitor rather than raise a complaint.
6. Companies growing faster than their competitors generate 40% more of their revenue from personalization than slower-growing peers. McKinsey’s finding isn’t specific to banking, but it explains why the institutions investing in relevant, individualized communication are pulling ahead rather than simply keeping pace.
What bank customers specifically want
Forrester’s banking-specific personalization research puts numbers on what “personalized” actually means to a bank customer.
7. Sixty-nine percent of U.S. online adults are interested in personalized overdraft alerts. It’s the highest-interest personalization feature Forrester measured, and one banks already have the transaction data to deliver.
8. Forty-six percent of U.S. online adults want a personal financial health score from their bank. A running, individualized read on their financial standing is what customers are asking for here (Forrester).
9. The same share, 46%, want personalized product offers based on their actual financial situation. In other words, an offer created from the products and balances a customer already holds (Forrester).
10. Forty-five percent want personalized insights based on their own spending patterns. That’s a proactive read on what a customer’s own transactions say about their habits, distinct from a one-time health score or a single tailored offer, and it points to the same underlying ask: communication built from a customer’s own data (Forrester).
Further reading: Learn why banks need personalized video for digital onboarding and how to implement it at your organization.
Why generic bank communication is losing ground
11. Half of consumers say their bank’s communications feel formal, impersonal, dated, and out-of-touch. Persado’s 2024 banking personalization study, based on 1,061 U.S. adults with a bank account, found that’s not a fringe complaint—it’s how half of all bank customers describe the letters, emails, and statements landing in their inbox today.
12. Forty-five percent of consumers say they’d consider switching banks for one that delivers a more personalized digital experience, the same Persado research found. For a meaningful share of customers, loyalty now hinges less on rates or fees than on whether their bank’s communications feel like they were actually written for them.
13. More than 70% of consumers say they’d switch financial institutions for richer video content. From a PYMNTS and SundaySky study, this is the clearest signal in the list: customers aren’t asking their bank to communicate less; they’re asking it to communicate better.
14. Nearly half of consumers are interested in video specifically to learn about financial products, per the same PYMNTS and SundaySky research. That interest sits well above general enthusiasm for marketing content, and it aligns with why static web pages are losing ground: text can’t show a customer their own account, but a video can.
Why video specifically is gaining ground
15. Seventy-six percent of companies now publish at least one video a month. Wistia’s 2026 State of Video Report shows video production has moved from occasional project to standing marketing infrastructure across industries—banking included.
16. Eighty-one percent of marketing teams share video on LinkedIn, now B2B’s leading video platform, per the same Wistia report. That matters for the parts of banking that sell to businesses rather than consumers: commercial banking, wealth management, and small-business acquisition all run through channels where video is increasingly the default format.
17. Sixty-two percent of consumers have watched a video, such as a demo, review, or FAQ, to learn about a brand or product before buying. HubSpot’s consumer research confirms video has become a standard step in the buying process, not an optional add-on to a webpage.
18. Thirty-seven percent of consumers prefer discovering products through short-form video, compared with 8% who prefer long-form video, the same HubSpot research found. For acquisition marketing especially, this is a format preference banks can’t route around with a longer explainer video or a denser landing page.
What SundaySky sees in the market
Customers want more personalization—period.
Closing that gap is the specific problem that SundaySky’s enterprise video creation and personalization platform is built to solve. Leading banks use SundaySky to deliver a unique video experience for each customer at the moment it’s viewed, created from that customer’s data, account type, next-best action, and more. For a regulated industry, that also means the platform holds SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and HITRUST certifications.
SundaySky in action—take a platform tour and see how it works.
What personalized video delivers for banks
19. Personalized onboarding video has driven 30–40% faster account activation across SundaySky’s banking and financial services clients, along with a 12% lift in average funding amounts. New customers who see their own account setup, activation steps, and next actions reflected in a video move through onboarding faster than customers reading the same instructions in a generic welcome packet.
20. Elsewhere in SundaySky’s banking and financial services book of business, call center volume dropped 18% after switching to personalized video, and in Bank of America’s Preferred Rewards program, more than 80% of viewers said the video left them feeling like a valued customer. Based on SundaySky’s own customer results, credit unions and banks running similar personalized video programs have also reported a 12–15% increase in digital banking enrollment and a roughly 11-point lift in Net Promoter Score.
What these bank marketing stats mean for your 2026 plan
Line up the 20 stats above and one argument holds: the banks losing deposits aren’t necessarily losing on price or product. They’re losing because customers can’t tell that their bank knows anything specific about them, and enough alternatives exist that customers no longer wait around to find out.
Personalization and video aren’t separate initiatives competing for the same budget line. The data shows they solve the same problem from two directions: one decides what to say to each customer, the other gives it a format customers want to receive.
FAQ
Why does personalization matter so much in bank marketing?
Personalization has become the baseline expectation from consumers. McKinsey found 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions and 76% get frustrated without them. In banking specifically, Forrester found strong interest in personalized overdraft alerts, offers, and financial insights. When a bank can’t deliver that, every communication reads as generic, and generic communication is directly linked to the switching behavior J.D. Power documented in its 2026 study. The gap isn’t a data problem for most banks; they already have the account, balance, and transaction history needed to personalize. It’s a production and delivery problem, which is what platforms built specifically for personalization at scale are designed to solve.
How does video improve bank customer engagement?
Video gives banks a way to make personalization visible instead of leaving it buried in text. PYMNTS and SundaySky’s research found more than 70% of consumers would switch financial institutions for richer video content, and nearly half want video specifically to learn about financial products. In practice, banks using personalized video for onboarding and account communication have reported faster activation, higher funding amounts, and fewer support calls as a result. A statement or onboarding sequence built as a video, rather than a PDF or a page of instructions, gives a bank a way to show a customer their own balance, their own next step, and their own account.
What’s the difference between generic bank marketing and personalized bank marketing?
Generic marketing sends the same message, page, or video to every customer regardless of their account, balance, or situation. Personalized marketing builds the communication around each customer’s real data instead. Fifty-five percent of consumers already say their bank’s website content feels irrelevant to their needs, which is strong evidence that generic content is failing right at the moment customers are trying to decide where to put their money. The practical distinction usually comes down to whether a communication reflects a customer’s specific account and situation or a generic version aimed at an entire segment.
Do bank customers really want video content from their bank?
The data says yes, specifically. Beyond the 70%-plus of consumers who’d switch institutions for better video, 62% have watched a video to learn about a brand or product before buying, and 37% prefer discovering products through short-form video over longer formats. Bank customers aren’t an exception to broader video preferences; they’re following the same pattern as consumers everywhere else, which is exactly why static statements and text-heavy web pages keep underperforming. The appetite is strongest around exactly the moments banks already communicate about most: onboarding, statements, and product offers.
How can banks start using personalized video in their marketing?
Most banks start with the highest-volume, highest-friction moments: onboarding, account statements, and product offers, since these already involve data the bank has and communication customers already receive regularly. Platforms like SundaySky Create let banks create a video once and render it individually for every customer using their real account data, rather than producing separate videos by hand for every segment or campaign. That approach is what makes personalization achievable at the scale of a full retail banking customer base instead of a handful of high-value accounts.
Curious what the bank marketing stats above would look like applied to your own onboarding or statement communications? Download “How Banks Win with Personalized Video and AI” to see how SundaySky helps banks turn account data into personalized video at scale, or request your own demo with us today.
