With a digital lens on the financial landscape, banks have undergone significant transformations in the past decades, driven by digital disruption. Technological advancements, along with shifting consumer expectations, have made digital brand presence a priority, creating a business focus here that aims to enhance engagement and foster innovation in service.

Exploring Digital Interest Trends in Banking Brands

Over the past 19 years, global interest in the banking sector has experienced seasonal fluctuations besides a recent moderate decline. This trend can be attributed to a variety of interconnected factors, including the impact of regulatory changes following the financial crisis, persistently low interest rates, declining loan demand, demographic shifts, or broader global economic conditions. Despite these challenges, the average annual digital popularity of banking has shown a commendable growth rate of 5.66% over the past two decades. However, in the interval from 2018 to 2023, the annual average growth rate has dipped to -2.42%, reflecting the challenges faced by the industry.

How Banking Brands Leverage Social Media

In the age of social media, all brands are pursuing to gain a reputation in the digital space, as social platforms can affect brand perceptions and foster connections with the community. 

Translating to numbers, all analysed brands have surpassed 2 million followers, highlighting a significant surge in global digital popularity. Among these platforms, LinkedIn stands out as a strategic focal point, followed by Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). While platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are ideally suited for engaging younger audiences, banks have been slow to adopt them into their strategies. 

Leading the way in social media engagement, the British bank, HSBC, ranks at the top.

UBS Leads in Mobile and SEO Performance

Key indicators of the webpage performance encompass various parameters that contribute to the overall user experience. In the digital realm, user experience is a critical aspect of ensuring a smooth user journey, and also in questions of maintaining the brand reputation. 

For banking brands under analysis, the average performance scores for their webpages stand at 82 out of 100 for both desktop and mobile platforms. This indicates fast loading times according to PageSpeed Insights. 

Diving into the details, HSBC achieves the best overall desktop performance with a score of 85, reflecting its strong website functionality on desktop. Regarding mobile performance, UBS stands out with an impressive score of 93, demonstrating its effectiveness in delivering a positive mobile user experience. UBS also leads in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) performance with a maximum score of 100, followed closely by BNP Paribas at 96. This indicates that these brands prioritize SEO as a key strategy to enhance their online visibility.

Digital Popularity Trends in the Banking Sector

Analyzing the digital popularity trends of these brands over the past decade shows a general decline, with UBS being a notable exception.  

From 2004 to 2023, the average yearly increase in digital interest was 0.93%. Both HSBC and Barclays experienced substantial declines based on the overall assessment. In contrast, as the chart below indicates, Santander and BNP Paribas have remained relatively stable, while UBS has demonstrated resilience and modest growth.