Primary accounts anchor bank cross-selling despite fintechs
Dutch banks maintain effective cross-selling channels through primary current accounts despite fintech competition. Survey data covering 2,326 consumers shows 83 percent purchase secondary financial products from their main provider, with mortgage cross-selling proving especially resilient.
Anchored accounts and divided portfolios
Analysis of 2,326 Dutch consumers reveals that 83 percent hold at least one secondary financial product with their primary current account provider, averaging 1.7 additional products.
While 70 percent of consumers also use alternative financial institutions, only 4 percent rely exclusively on outside providers for secondary services.
Flexible savings accounts represent the most frequent cross-sold product at 67 percent, followed by credit cards at 36 percent and mortgages at 23 percent.
The authors find that the primary account continues to “anchor” bank-customer relationships.
However, cross-selling patterns diverge across product lines: uptake has weakened for savings accounts and investment products, while remaining stable for mortgages.
App adoption cuts both ways
Three lenders—Rabobank, ING and ABN AMRO—hold 88 percent of primary current accounts in the Netherlands.
Digital tools foster both diversification and relationship deepening: higher digital experience raises the likelihood of buying products at the main bank by 3 percentage points and multi-banking by 4 percentage points.
Consumer preference for single-banking convenience reduces multi-banking by 9 percentage points, whereas perceived transparency across financial terms does not deter main-bank loyalty.
Convenience trumps open banking
Regulatory hopes that open banking would dismantle traditional retail moats appear misplaced.
Dutch savers consistently trade yield optimization for the administrative convenience of a single bank.
Incumbent dominance will persist until pricing transparency translates into genuine consumer mobility.