|
Financial Ghosting
For months now, J.D. Power has been tracking a behavioral phenomenon that the research firm has termed “soft switching.”
Here’s how it works. A consumer opens a new, secondary checking account — maybe with Chime or SoFi, the two companies benefiting most from this behavior, according to J.D. Power. But the new customer quietly makes the new provider their primary account while retaining the old account. “They don’t close accounts or formally sever ties; they simply redirect their activity elsewhere,” wrote J.D. Power, which likened the behavior to being ghosted by a romantic partner.
In the fourth quarter 2025, the firm found that almost half of new checking (49%) and savings (46%) account openings were for secondary accounts, which “suggests that more banking customers are expanding and diversifying away from their primary deposit relationships.” Soft switching behavior is less common among the affluent and more common among mass market customers, where Chime claimed a larger share of new checking accounts.
How do banks know when they’ve lost a customer’s primary account? Unfortunately, many bank leaders lack a firm handle on how many of those accounts they have, says Mac Thompson, CEO of the analytics platform White Clay. They tend to set a low bar for what counts as primary, maybe two transactions in a month. That could represent a portion of a customer’s paycheck, while the real transaction flow might be happening at another institution.
He advises banks to look at their customer account data through a more realistic lens. Look at accounts with 15 or more transactions a month — not two. “A lot of community banks are in secondary positions even though they think they're in first,” he says.
Switching, he adds, most often occurs when someone undergoes a major life event, like a big move, or results from a negative experience at their bank. Poor service drove more than a third of those switching to Chime, according to J.D. Power. Those customers were also more apt to value digital payments capabilities — a gap for many community banks, according to Bank Director’s 2025 Technology Survey.
Banks need a clear picture of whether they’re truly their customers’ primary bank. “Retention is astronomically better,” says Thompson. Primary banks are also more likely to have a customer’s noninterest-bearing deposits. “Profitability is a lot better; customer lifetime value is better.”
Americans may be juggling multiple accounts these days, but being the primary bank still matters.
• Emily McCormick, vice president of editorial & research for Bank Director
| 
