The launch of the Classic Plus account on 31 March was the key factor in this growth, and Paul Pester, TSB CEO, tweeted on 24 Oct it was "great to see people voting with their feet for TSB – 1 in 10 opening or switching their bank account choose TSB". The success of the product and campaign helped grow customer deposits by £0.5bn ($0.8bn) to £24.2bn in the third quarter.
However, Roy Beale, senior media relations manager at TSB said while the bank would work hard to hold on to its new current account customer base, the focus had now shifted towards mortgages.
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"The mortgage segment is very important to us and we’re on track to deliver our intermediary mortgage channel in Q1 2015 so we’ll have a pilot at the end of this year in December and in January hopefully we’ll start to see mortgage applications through local brokers more widely," he said.
TSB’s extensive advertising campaign for the Classic Plus account, post-launch, was widely regarded as being very successful but other campaigns such as Borrow Well, which encourages responsible lending amongst consumers and the council tax initiative, which pays council tax for one year for first time buyers or home movers coming to TSB, have been the priority of late.
TSB’s ambition is to attain a 6% market share of current accounts by June 2019. The fact it opened 9.7% of all new and switching current accounts across the market during the quarter Jul-Sep 2014 shows they are well on track to meet, if not overshoot, this target. Currently, TSB holds a 4.2% overall market share.
"It’s not unexpected, at half year we reported a 9.2% flow to us so this quarter, after the launch of Classic Plus, which was so well received. We’re delighted so many people are coming to us and that we are exceeding our long term target by such a large margin at this point in time," Beale said.
The Classic Plus account offers a "market-leading 5% and TSB hopes to retain its new customers by delivering excellent customer service and building deeper relationships with them", Beale added.
Council tax initiative is currently available, TSB ran this earlier in 2014 as well, successfully, but may not be for much longer.
TSB’s results statement quoted a Which magazine customer service survey in Oct 2014, in which TSB ranked joint 22nd with a customer service score of 76%, but was the only high street bank ranking above 75%.
In an August 2014 Which survey for customer satisfaction in banks, TSB ranked 9th out of 24, ahead of each of the UK’s traditional big four: Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and NatWest and two percentage points behind Santander.
Source: Which?
