Highstreet banks have all but caught up, the Halifax app for example is very good, it does everything Starlings does apart from spaces.
What will the fintechs come up with next to push ahead again? They need strong differentiation or people will stay with the big banks.
Iāve never used any of the high street banks that often get praised for app quality (Lloyds group, Natwest group, and Barclays). But those I have accounts with (HSBC, Santander, Nationwide, TSB) have apps that Iād still describe as far behind the fintechs.
Yes, Iād agree. That list of your accounts, regrettably, is as bad a bunch as there is as far as the app is concerned.
The Halifax app is slowā¦
The gap has narrowed, to an extent, but a bit of clunk usually kicks in. UI or back end process wise. I still find this with RBS - the app is tolerable but I wouldnāt want it as my sole banking app.
RBS is one of the most native-feeling, although I agree that you still run into sole clunky interfaces.
The problem with the Lloyds Group apps is that a lot of the time it seems to be rendering webpages within the app, resulting in the slow feeling and random loading spinners. Barclays also do this with their app.
Yeah I agree - itās fairly decent so when you do hit a button that loads a webpage it gives you a jolt. That said, better than the whole app feeling like a webpageā¦
Iāve said this on another forum the other day: Iāve grown tired of fintechs. Too many surprises, missing features, random charges (yes, a complaint that used to be levelled against legacy banks!), poor customer service, and just very little to actually benefit.
In terms of benefits: Starlingās USP is a silly useless wheel, Chaseās USP is that you canāt actually do banking with them, Monzoās USP - ah, well, letās not go there 
True, if my legacy banks where Nationwide or Santander Iād say fintechs are miles ahead. But my legacy ābanksā are Barclays, RBS, and AmEx, and their apps just work, they do what you expect a bank to do, and donāt charge me random fees (admittedly mostly because Iāve learned for decades how to avoid paying them, whilst the fintech charging structure is still new to me).
Only use of fintechs I have is Revolut kidās account and Starling Euro. Everything else is firmly back with the legacy banks.
Given your choice of banks, itās not surprising youāve come to that assessment of the neo-banks. It was always going to be the case that existing banks with anything about them would close the gap (and their stability as an extra benefit to boot).
Honeymoon period clearly overā¦.
Really? For me itās slightly longer than Starling loading at log in, but once youāre in you fly around it.
It depends what you are doing - many pages hand off to a web view, which takes some time to load. The transaction list and most simple actions are not very slow at all, but some parts of the app are.
Indeed, @nanos happens to use some of the best traditional banks, technology-wise, so the gap isnāt as obvious.
Barclays even offer a Euro account (although itās not as easy to open as Starlingās) so, in theory, you donāt even really need Starling for that.
Apart from the obvious being Chase Bank U.K. which unless it actually starts operating like a proper bank instead of the current half arsed spending account it currently is, I donāt actually have an issue with the fintech banking scene. Then again, the only fintech bank Iām with that is app only (beside Chase), is Starling, and Starling does for me exactly what I need it to. Ok, I accept, the dumb wheel thing is exactly that, dumb, but it has become a feature of Starling and if they had any intention of dumping it, theyād have done so by now.
High Street legacy banks for me personally, I couldnāt actually give a fig about as I never use their outdated branch networks anyway. Yes, I have a Nationwide account, run entirely online. Their website is in my own opinion, outdated and absolutely in need of a total revision. Trouble is, it probably has a demographic that doesnāt like much to move with the times, so whereās the incentive for Nationwide to sass the whole thing up?
I do like the Lloyds app, itās very well thought out, though seeing as I have now given up my Lloyds credit card now the interest free period has finished, I no longer use Lloyds services. The RBS app is unspectacular and no where near in the same leage as Starling. I do have an RBS account, but itās only a wages in account and used for nothing else.
AMEX, absolutely excellent credit card app, no complaints there and I could see little they could improve on.
So, Iāve just received my new M&S credit card with 23 months interest free credit and having once before had an M&S Bank account and a credit card a few years back, their app was absolutely bloody dire. Iāve been on the iOS app store and apparently, it still is judging by the appalling reviews it has. Youād have thought HSBC would have done something about it by now, but clearly (to me) they have absolutely no interest in it.
As for charges, well I donāt have an overdraft and I pay everything on time every time, so I canāt comment further.
Customer service. Well I rarely ever contact any of the banks I deal with. My most recent however, has been to Chase to complain about their lack of features, most notably, no Confirmation of Payee. They answered me extremely quickly and enthusiastically, despite the fact that one of their āadvisorsā gave me incorrect information. Starling, I had to contact them a couple of weeks ago because they claim theyād sent out a new debit card which after almost 2 weeks, had failed to materialise. They initiated the process of ordering a new one to be sent out via tracked mail, but low and behold, the card they said they sent out arrived the very next day, so the replacement was cancelled. Again though, their Customer Service was swift and cheerful, so no complaints.
As for legacy banks themselves, the term ālegacyā wonāt much matter anyway once almost the entire branch network system had closed, quite possibly within the next 20 years when of course physical cash will also have been flushed down the fiscal loo.
I agree with all of that, and of course if Nationwide (as an example) spent time and money on digital upgrades that would have to be money diverted away from maintaining their branch network - which many of their more ātraditionalā customers might value.
This fundamental demographic difference, between people with the attitude of never wanting to do anything in person vs those who do almost everything in person, is going to colour the approach of different banks more than anything else, I think.
Traditional banks could catch up to the fintechs fairly quickly, if they really wanted to, but they canāt in reality since there is a consumer and governmental expectation on them to provide branch services too (and, to a more limited extent, also a business case for this to continue in some capacity to serve long-standing customers).
As far as the āConsumerā is concerned, again, weāre probably talking a majority of folks in their fifties and beyond. Thereās still a hard core of people in their 60s to 80ās plus who just canāt because of personal or technical reasons, accept a fast changing digital world. I just canāt see a queue of younger people in their 20ās, 30ās or 40ās, regularly standing queuing up outside or inside a legacy bank branch. The last time I stepped foot into my old Lloyds Branch in the East Midlands, it was populated almost exclusively by the purple rinse brigade. I couldnāt wait to get out of there!
True, although there are more of them than you think.
Itās a certain demographic grouping of people that correlates strongly with age, but not exclusively.
Canāt comment on Starling as closed my acct with them over 2 years ago
Oddly I found the Lloyds app to be quicker on my device - when I had it
Perhaps there is an element of iOS and Android disparity here.
Starlingās Android app seems to be worse than the iOS version, at least anecdotally.
(Full disclosure: I havenāt used it, Iām just going off comments made here previously.)