The Q4 2025 benchmarking report for UK online banking companies has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK online banking companies perform across the digital space.
The latest Q4 2025 benchmarking report for UK online banking companies has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national online banking companies, including Starling Bank, Tandem, Monzo, Chase, Atom bank, Revolut, Monese, Kroo Bank, Wise, Zopa Bank, Smile Digital Banking, and Bankera.
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other online banking companies to win brand exposure, generate online views, and drive sign-ups for new accounts. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q4 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form or schedule a call.
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 online banking companies on, check out our quick-look table below;
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing online banking companies, or request a copy of the report for the full review.
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each site based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q4 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK online banking companies was £37,888, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £87 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, Chase reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £16, and Monzo has the highest at £726.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Starling Bank has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £112, and Wise has the highest at £1,630,000.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. For online banking companies, their website is one of the most important components of their business. It is therefore vital for their site to be running smoothly to ensure their customers can easily navigate to key conversion points.
In the previous quarter, Monzo reported the most 404 errors (223). This quarter, Monzo has made positive changes to reduce their 404 errors to a total of 96. This quarter, Monese is the company to watch, with a total of 245 404 errors. Leaving 404 errors unfixed can harm SEO performance over time. Search engines may struggle to crawl the site efficiently, wasting crawl budget on broken links. This reduces visibility and rankings in search results.
When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. For online banking companies, their customers need to have full and absolute trust in their brand. A slow, lagging mobile site will not ensure the customer has trust and may lead them to try other businesses instead.
In our last audit, Zopa Bank reported the slowest mobile site speed (21). This quarter, Zopa Bank has increased their mobile site speed to 31, no longer putting them at the bottom of the leaderboard. This quarter, Revolut flagged the slowest mobile site speed of all companies (29). Poor mobile speed directly impacts conversions and sales. Users are less likely to complete purchases or sign up for services if the process feels slow and clunky. This results in lost revenue and reduced customer satisfaction.
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Online banking companies should be continually pushing to improve their DA and can look to creating interesting content and studies around money management and finances that will gain press attention and links back to their sites.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. In our last audit, Kroo Bank reported the lowest DA (46). This quarter, Kroo Bank has decreased their DA score to 43, continuing to make them the company to watch. Search engines don’t use domain authority directly, but it summarises key ranking factors like backlinks, trust, and content quality. A rising DA shows a site is building authority and credibility.
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. With online banks increasing in popularity, especially post-pandemic, we would expect all the companies to be seeing increases in their mobile and desktop traffic.
Five online banking companies reported a decrease in organic traffic on desktop, with Kroo Bank reporting the biggest loss (-51%). On mobile, 7 companies saw a decrease in organic traffic, with Kroo Bank also reporting the biggest loss on this device (-49%). Strong organic traffic signals to search engines that a website is valuable and relevant. The more users consistently visit from search, the more trust and authority the site gains. This can lead to even better rankings over time.
Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a site can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Online banking companies should be utilising all Universal Search opportunities, as prospective customers will be interested to see how previous and existing account holders have found their experience. This can particularly be achieved with 'reviews', 'FAQs' and 'people also ask' results.
Wise continues to secure the top spot for the most Universal Search appearances (128,941) — a reduction from 147,527 in our previous report. The majority of these appearances came from ‘people also ask’ (123,800).
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. There are many longtail keyword options that online banking companies could be using, and they should look to prioritise keywords which include high purchase intent phrases such as 'switch now', or 'reward for switching'.
Wise secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (93,568) and positions 4–10 (82,869). Using longtail keywords consistently builds topical authority around a subject. Search engines recognise the site as a reliable source for related queries. Over time, this authority improves rankings across multiple keywords.
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. Social media is a great way to advertise for online banking companies as their potential customers are already online. Online banks should consider mobile-first ad formats, that will provide a seamless experience for mobile users, especially where an app is essential for signing up.
We’ve included screenshots of Monzo’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK online banking company should reduce the amount of text per post to make their content easier to scan for social media users.
When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content which achieves traffic over a long period of time. As with building content for digital PR strategies, online banks can look to create highly engaging, shareable content that details interesting facts about spending, or money management advice.
Chase secured the most Facebook Likes (3.7m), and Revolut secured the most Instagram followers (432,900). Facebook was the most popular social media platforms of all brands. Wise received the highest total engagement rate (2,398,796) and the highest average engagement (2,201).
20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. With online banking companies gaining momentum, and their services being relevant to all demographics, they need to ensure that their websites are accessible to everyone.
In our previous audit, Monese received the most accessibility alerts (32). This quarter, Monese has slightly increased their accessibility alerts to 33. Though, this increase is only slight, all brands should be aware of the implications these alerts can have on their visitors. Alerts around navigation problems affect users who rely on keyboards or assistive technology. If forms or menus aren’t accessible, these visitors can’t interact properly with the site. Solving these issues allows all users to engage equally.
To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Rory Tarplee.