Online consumers in Asia buy three times more banking products than less tech-savvy peers, says McKinsey

Asia’s growing population of digitally active consumers are buying three times as many banking products as their less tech-savvy peers, prompting lenders to improve their online offerings, according to a new McKinsey report.

Each online banking customer purchased 1.6 products on average in the last 12 months, while traditional customers – who prefer to visit a branch – bought just 0.5, said McKinsey in the survey published on Tuesday.

And the digital customers owned an average of 4.4 products, said the report, about 40 per cent more than those who don’t use digital channels at all.

McKinsey conducted the survey in the second half of 2017 to garner opinions from 17,000 consumers in 15 Asian markets, including Australia, mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam.

“The survey findings come as new, and more pronounced evidence of the value creation of digital savvy consumers to banks,” said Nicole Zhou, a Beijing-based partner at McKinsey.

To banks, online consumers come with two distinct advantages: they not only spend more but are cheaper to serve too, since many transactions are done through self-service channels.

Banks in the region, especially smaller lenders, need to act quickly to generate more value from their digital operations, said Zhou.