Major finance brands are being squeezed out of the online market by price comparison sites, which are scooping up over 60% of search traffic across the financial sector.
The Stickyeyes Financial Services Intelligence Report highlights the current state of play in the online financial services sector and explores the impact of key Google algorithm updates, regulatory changes and a shift in consumer behaviour in the market.
It reveals that brands including Money Supermarket, MoneySavingExpert and Confused.com combine to take more than three-fifths of online search traffic across the financial services sector at the expense of established banking and financial services brands.
This is even more pronounced in the insurance markets, where five comparison services combine to hold 67% of the overall click share in the car insurance market and 78% in home insurance.
In the current accounts market, direct retail brands accounted for 80% of the ten most visible brands in the market in 2012-13 but 12 months later, this has fallen just 50%.
While traditionally dominant within organic search, comparison sites are shown to be growing their share of the paid search market, too. They claim 36% of search visibility across the industry within the paid channel, and 48% of the market for core products such as savings, current accounts and mortgages. In these lucrative markets, comparison have grown by 60% compared to 18 months ago.
The study also shows the winners and losers over the past 18 months. Some of the sector’s most established brands, such as HSBC, are among the biggest fallers in 2014. HSBC earned the second highest click share in the current accounts market last year, with 13% of the combined paid and organic markets but now, has just 3%, after losing its high rankings for a number of core search phrases.
Meanwhile, the Post Office is a new entry into the organic top 10 index for the travel insurance market, climbing from an average ranking position of 10 at the end of 2012 for the primary term travel insurance, to position 1 in Q1 of 2014.
Stickyeyes head of insights Phil McGuin said: “Some of the industry’s most established brands have lost out on significant online market share in core services, with brands that were in the top ten in last year’s report falling completely off the radar in 2014. There is no doubt that it is the price comparison websites that are dominating the market in 2014.”
“The challenge for retail financial brands is to understand exactly how social media can work for them and to claw back not only the positive sentiment of their audiences, but vital online visibility from price comparison services.”
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