Banks Leave Millions on the Table by Not Plotting Customers’ Forward Motion
By Sarah Welch, Managing Director, Curinos
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Bank checking relationships have multiplied, with the average customer now holding two or more, up 47% since 2019. Fintechs who historically catered to the paycheck-to-paycheck segment are entering the rewards and loyalty space for the mass market, and competing harder for primacy with competitive offers. Meanwhile, traditional bank loyalty constructs are still offered only to customers who qualify today.
For a bank with a million retail customers, Curinos estimates the traditional snapshot view of qualifying tiers could leave an estimated $640 million in deposits on the table compared to achieving top-quartile retention and average balances with these customers. That’s because it can’t see which customers are gaining momentum and which have already stalled.
Key insight: The banks that become aware of where a relationship is headed, not just where it stands, will win customers’ loyalty.
Need to Know:
- Tiers only measure right now. They can’t tell you whether a customer is stalling out or building momentum.
- Banks perceived as rewarding loyalty see a 75% higher acquisition rate, and early primacy drives 60% lower attrition.
- Entry-level customers hold just 14% of deposits today, but that share can grow to a third within five years, a shift traditional loyalty programs never see coming.
- For a bank with a million customers, an estimated $640 million opportunity sits in the disconnect between where mass-market customers are today and where their trajectory is taking them.
- Decision intelligence tells a bank whether to act, or to do nothing at all.
Loyalty Is Getting Harder to Earn
Fintechs, once narrowly associated with paycheck-to-paycheck customers, are moving upmarket, using favorable rates and no-fee structures to compete directly for the deposits and primacy that once anchored a traditional bank relationship.
Most banks deploy tiered loyalty programs, and it has worked for decades. Entry-level customers get foundational rewards as the relationship deepens. According to Curinos data, institutions perceived by customers as rewarding loyalty see a 75% higher acquisition rate than banks that aren’t perceived that way. Customers who build loyal habits carry three to four times the balances of customers who don’t, and achieving primacy early in the relationship results in 60% lower attrition.
You can see this done well in DBS’s Multiplier program in Singapore, which lets customers continuously track their tier progress based on real activity such as salary deposits, spending, and savings. It’s a live signal instead of a once-a-year snapshot or a thin slice of a much longer story.
Why it matters: Legacy loyalty programs measure only whether a customer qualifies at this moment.
- Institutions seen as rewarding loyalty post a 75% higher acquisition rate
- Early primacy in the relationship drives 60% lower attrition
- Leading Singapore banks make tier progress continuously visible
A Snapshot Can’t See a Trajectory
Three customers can each hold $80,000 with a bank and look identical to a tiering system. One has carried that balance for a decade. One transferred it last week and may still be shopping for a better rate. One arrived with $2,000 and built up to $80,000 through steady saving. A tier treats all three the same, rewarding a customer who was never leaving while missing the momentum of one who’s just getting started
That distinction matters even more when you look below the premium thresholds. Roughly 80% of a typical bank’s customers hold just 14% of deposits, and only 2-4% ever reach the top tier, making it tempting to write off the segment. But those balances aren’t static.
Tracked over five years, the share of a mass-market cohort’s total deposits can grow from roughly a tenth to a third, a 5.4x balance increase, while mass-affluent balances from the same starting cohort actually shrink to 0.7x of where they began. The customers a tiered system rewards today aren’t the ones driving the bank’s growth tomorrow.
Key insight: A tier tells a bank what a customer has earned but can’t tell a bank where that customer is headed.
- 80% of customers hold only 14% of deposits today
- That share can grow to a third within five years as mass-market balances build
- The customers in tier rewards today aren’t the ones driving tomorrow’s growth
Tiers and Triggers Aren’t Enough
Most institutions lean on two mechanisms. A tier answers when someone qualifies for benefits. A trigger notices something happened—a balance moved, a product opened, a direct deposit set up—and prompts an action. Neither answers what should happen next.
That’s the job of ‘decision intelligence’, a capability that connects customer trajectory to action. Take that $80,000 transfer from earlier. A trigger fires an offer because the rule says it should. Decision intelligence asks whether that offer will actually change anything. If they’re already behaving like a primary relationship, that incentive isn’t loyalty spend, it’s a discount. The better answer might be no action at all, freeing that budget for a customer whose behavior can genuinely be influenced. Customers feel the difference, too. Nearly half cite irrelevant offers as their top complaint about bank outreach.
Why it matters: Every signal deserves a decision. Not every signal deserves an action, and knowing the difference is what separates activation from intelligence.
- A trigger reacts to an event; decision intelligence weighs whether a response adds value
- Rewarding behavior a customer was already going to repeat wastes loyalty spend
- Sometimes the highest-value decision is no action at all. More isn’t better, better is better
Recognize Momentum Before a Tier Can See It
Consider a 28-year-old customer with a checking account, direct deposit, and $100 in savings. By almost any tiered framework, they’re invisible and don’t come close to qualifying for anything. But they’re an aggressive new saver, a meaningful signal of momentum even if it won’t move them to another tier for years. Decision intelligence can recognize they’re building a stronger relationship and respond with guidance and reinforcement that keeps them progressing, instead of leaving them for a competitor to pick off.
What to do: Banks already have the transactional and behavioral data to spot this kind of momentum. The shift is operationalizing those signals through a governed decision framework.
- Score customers on trajectory, not just current balance, using data banks already hold
- Reserve incentive spend for customers whose behavior can genuinely be influenced
- Build reinforcement, not just rewards, into engagement for customers below premium thresholds
Bottom line: Tiers create consistency and trust. But as more customers hold multi-bank relationships, it matters more to act on a customer’s trajectory than their balance. The cost of inaction is the $640 million that a competitor captures while a tiered system waits for a customer to qualify. Both the data and technology to do that in real time exist now. That’s how loyalty stops being something a customer has to earn and becomes something a bank demonstrates, one relevant decision at a time.
