Banks battle to retain less-loyal Gen Z customers

The chief executive of UBank, Kanishka Raja, agrees there are definite differences between younger generations. He says 18 to 35-year-olds – a group UBank targets – tend to interact more frequently with their banking app (40 per cent check their banking app daily), and they don’t typically stick with one bank.

“Whether it’s a deposit product, or a mortgage product, or a personal loan or buy now, pay later, they’d have multiple relationships [with financial services providers],” he says.

NAB set its sights on acquiring more young customers when it bought neobank 86 400 in 2021, and its digital offshoot UBank has recently shown solid growth. UBank grew its customer numbers by more than 200,000 during the 2025 financial year to more than 1 million, and it holds about $21 billion in deposits and $16.4 billion in home loans.

Bendigo’s youth-focused Up, meanwhile, also reported 22 per cent growth in customers during the past year, to more than 1.2 million. It had $3.3 billion in deposits, it said in November, and $2 billion in home loans.

And it’s not only the youth-focused banks that take a keen interest in Generation Z, which is a market none of the banks can afford to ignore.

Financial services lead at Accenture Australia, Ian Pollari, points out Gen Z is projected to be the largest single generational cohort in the Australian workforce by 2030. He says these customers will become the “mainstream market” for banks in the next 10 to 15 years.

“Obviously, as they’re earning income, that becomes an important opportunity for banks and other providers of financial services,” Pollari says.

To attract these important but more disloyal clients, banks are in a battle to win over customers in the online environment – whether that’s by generating social media content or via perks and hoping the word spreads online.

For example, several banks, including ING, UBank and Up, have offered “refer a friend” deals where they try to lure customers by offering cash if customers sign up their friends – gyms often run similar campaigns.

UBank’s Raja says it gets about 15 per cent of its newly acquired customers from its referral program, and he says it’s also the most-followed Australian bank on TikTok, adding that it gets about 20 per cent of new customers from social media. “Social media and referrals are an important source of acquisition,” he says.

Loading

Twenty-year-old Benjamin Woodruff, who makes TikTok videos about finance as a hobby, estimates he made a few hundred dollars or so from one of these referral schemes, and says these are a good way for a bank to bring in new customers.

“If the bank itself is solid and they have a good product, then these referral programs are definitely a great way to get people on and then keep them,” says Woodruff, who has a car cleaning business and lives in Canberra.

The challenge for banks, however, is that bonuses or sweeteners are not enough on their own to retain customers for the long term – especially a generation that shuns brand loyalty.

Havranek, for example, says that while perks such as a referral bonus are welcome, they’re not a reason to stay with a bank.

Instead, bankers and experts argue the key to retaining younger customers is having the right technology to suit more digitally-savvy customers who aren’t loyal to one institution alone.

For example, banks often design accounts in a way that allows people to also look at money they have with other institutions, while also pushing personal financial management apps that help people track their spending as another way of keeping customers.

Over the longer-term, banks are also eyeing the competitive threat outside the banking industry, such as technology companies that don’t hold a banking licence but can offer similar financial products.

The standout example of this threat from tech disruptors is buy now, pay later (BNPL) loans – where the likes of Afterpay and Zip have effectively taken credit card business from banks by giving people quick access to credit when shopping online.

PWC banking and capital markets leader Noel Williams points to BNPL as one example of how tech-based players can become genuine competitors to banks, and says banks should be thinking about how to create “those kinds of experiences for their younger demographics to be more interactive and sticky.” For example, she says creating “networks of discounts or cashback offers” is one way of getting people to interact more with a business online.

And just as hype about artificial intelligence appears to have infiltrated most industries, AI could have a role to play in the banks’ battle to retain younger clients.

Loading

Williams says one way banks encourage greater interaction could be through “agentic commerce” – where AI bots would assist customers with financial coaching or even make purchases on for them.

Accenture’s Pollari also points to AI as a key potential future battleground, citing research that found 85 per cent of Generation Z were interested in using “intelligent agents” as a sort of personal financial assistant.

While the AI rollout is still in its early stages, Pollari says that in the next few years, we could start to see banks launch services similar to “financial services concierge” – basically a bot that customers can talk to about their financial needs.

Like most questions involving AI, it is difficult to know how many customers will really want to talk to a bot about their banking.

But if it is going to take off with anyone, it will probably be the younger customers who have grown up surrounded by technology and have lived a larger part of their lives online – including how they manage money.

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.