Albert Llorens only needed 14 months to create his own bank, and in just a year and a half he has had time to reach 25,000 clients. A still small figure when compared to other digital financial giants born in the network but with a vocation to revolutionize the banking sector. "Our project involves offering a commission-free and simpler banking. Where we first seek to fall in love, and then we already ask for commitment," explains the founder of Bnc10 to distinguish himself from the increasing number of connections that his physical rivals demand.
Neobanks have managed to double their client portfolio in recent months in the midst of a change in the commercial policy of traditional entities. Only between N26, Revolut, Bnext, 2gether and Bnc10 itself, five leading players in this new universe of mobile banking, captured 712,000 new customers in Spain last year , according to data from companies provided to EL MUNDO. This is an increase of 133% compared to the end of 2018.
The growth is led by foreign groups such as Revolut or N26 , which have landed in this market with an aggressive strategy that offers checking account management, payments and transactions for free. The first already has half a million users and the second 350,000 after having doubled its number of clients in the last year.
The recent growth of Spanish entities such as Bnext or Bnc10 has joined the landing of large European digital banks. The first has opened a branch in Madrid and now has 350,000 users, while the second hopes to close this year with 100,000 clients after two years of operations.
These entities have supported their growth on a new client disenchanted with the old financial sector and less loyalty to traditional brands. These are young people between 18 and 35 years old, with their own income, who use their mobile phones to carry out all their transactions and are aware of values of social responsibility that go beyond the banking business itself. "A third of this 'pioneers' changed banks last year looking for higher value-added products and services and other altruistic factors," explains a recent Accenture report .
As an example of the latter, the Dutch digital bank Bunq stands out , which offers among its main claims the possibility of contracting a stainless steel credit card with a useful life 50% higher than that of plastic ones. Its cost is 99 euros. In addition, the entity agrees to plant a tree for every 100 euros of purchases made by its customers with one of these cards.
But not everything is millennials. "We need volumes of several million customers for our business model to be profitable. It is difficult to become solvent by focusing on millennials who are not loyal to any brand," explains Llorens.
Another of the strategies used by these platforms involves alliances with other technology groups such as Netflix, Spotify or Glovo to offer discounts of up to 10% on subscriptions. In the case of N26, the alliance has been signed with the Lime scooter platform to ensure the movement of its clients.
This bank of German origin already has more than five million users in the world and has Spain as one of its markets with the greatest potential. Between this year and next, without going any further, they want to exceed one million users. Do you benefit from the latest increase in commissions among traditional banks? "Absolutely. It is a window of opportunity for us, since we have a lower cost structure to maintain," explains the bank's director of European markets, Francisco Sierra.
N26 strengthens its growth through greater agility in management. "The cost of maintaining a client for us can be 20 times lower than that of traditional banking," says Sierra. With accounts and free cash withdrawals at third party ATMs, the income model of these entities is located in the commissions charged to financial payment companies such as Mastercard or Visa for each electronic payment of their clients.
And, from there, these groups have begun to incorporate Premium services that do have an additional cost and that allow additional operations such as contracting insurance, international cash withdrawals, requesting small credits or even making investments.
On the other front, traditional banking does not remain oblivious to the growth of these digital groups. In addition to making millions of technology investments in recent years to modernize their relationship with the client and their technology platforms, these entities maintain assets of their own digital banks aimed at their younger audiences. These include, for example, OpenBank (Santander), Arrow Bank (BBVA) or MyInvestor (Andbank).
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