Roy Morgan research found that no more than 10.4 per cent of the personal customers of any major bank and no more than 19.8 per cent of business banking customers who had superannuation had it with their bank.
Speaking to InvestorDaily, Roy Morgan industry communications director Norman Morris said there is an awareness gap, where consumers don’t think of their bank when they think of their superannuation.
“You go [to the bank] for deposits, loans and other traditional banking type products. You don’t think about going to them for … superannuation,” Mr Morris said.
“Banks are for banking.”
In addition, Mr Morris said that many consumers are unaware of their bank’s super products, as the big four banks label their funds under a different branding.
He said that on the whole, major banks have been “largely unsuccessful” at taking the super fund market against specialist providers such as industry funds and the booming self-managed super fund (SMSF) sector.
“They’re up against people who have been in it for a long time, and they’re only just getting into it now,” Mr Morris said.
“The other thing is … we measure people’s satisfaction with the fund performance and I think that’s the overriding thing.
“The big retail funds operated by the banks tend to be at the lower end of the performance scale [compared to industry funds and SMSFs].”
Of both personal and business banking customers, Westpac had the highest cross sell at 10.4 per cent and 19.8 per cent respectively.
In personal banking, NAB followed at 9.5 per cent and in corporate banking CBA followed with 17.4 per cent.
Going forward, he said the banks should be looking to utilise their existing networks as “cross sell of financial products is an increasingly important target of all major banks”.
