Yesterday Wells Fargo reported their Retail Banking Customer Activity for February. There were two interesting pieces of information:
- New consumer credit card applications down 4% LM, and down 0.2 million, or 55%, YoY
- Consumer checking account opens down 3% LM, and down 0.3 million, or 43%, YoY
Basically consumer credit card applications are down 55% year over year and consumer checking account opens are down 43% year over year. This is despite Wells Fargo offering incredible generous promotions on it’s consumer checking accounts. This is the sixth straight month that Wells Fargo have reported declines on credit card/checking applications, not entirely surprising given they were fined $185 million and fired 5,300 employees due to opening accounts illegally.
As mentioned earlier, we’ve already seen a generous sign up bonus on the checking account and I’m hoping that these continued drops in credit card applications will force them to offer better credit card bonuses and rewards in the near future. As mentioned they recently sent out a survey with some interesting options such as a 50,000 point sign up bonus and 3x categories on dining/travel & gas. According to Financial Times they have plans to step up their targeting of “…new credit card users, piloting unsolicited mailshots as part of a step up in its marketing efforts”. Fingers crossed they release something big soon.
Hat tip to /r/churning & reader Simon
