Two-Thirds of Online Kiwis Use Internet Banking

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News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two-Thirds of Online Kiwis Now Use Internet Banking.
ASB, Westpac & National Bank the Most Visited Sites
Nielsen Online Consumer Finance Monitor

February 19, 2008, Auckland -- In New Zealand’s highly competitive retail banking market, online banking via the Internet has become a mainstream activity. Results from the latest Nielsen Online Consumer Finance Monitor show that over two thirds of people who use the Internet (68%) have accessed online banking sites in the last month.

“After 20 years of conducting the Nielsen Consumer Finance Monitor via face-to-face interviews, we have moved to online interviews in the last quarter of 2007. Therefore, the Online Consumer Finance Monitor is very well placed to monitor online banking,” commented Donald Sheppard, Associate Director, Financial Services Research at The Nielsen Company, New Zealand.

Out of every 100 people over 15 within New Zealand, 84 have access to the Internet and 71 use the Internet at least once a month (sourced from Nielsen Media Services, Panorama Q3 07). Of those who use the Internet, Nielsen Consumer Finance Monitor results show that 68 percent used online banking in the last month, while 57 percent used it at least once a week.

“Online banking has experienced phenomenal growth during the last three years with the proportion of people who had visited an online banking site more than doubling in this period” commented Mr Sheppard.

The most frequently used banking sites included ASB, Westpac and National Bank with all three of these sites now having over half a million unique browsers per month (Nielsen Online Market Intelligence). Considering the main banks that customers use, the Nielsen Online Consumer Finance shows ASB has the highest proportion of customers who used online banking in the last month ( 85%), followed by Kiwibank ( 81%) and Westpac ( 77%) (see chart 1).

Mr Sheppard said, “Once they use the Internet, people of all ages adopt online banking with enthusiasm. For younger people with Internet access, online banking is the norm – 80 percent of those under 40 used online banking in the last month. For older people, online banking is becoming common practice – 62 percent of people over 55 visited an online banking site in the last month”.

On their last visit to an online banking site, 90 percent of customers checked their account balances, while around six in ten (56%) transferred money. In addition, just under half (47%) made payments online.

Mr Sheppard points out that “on the whole, customers are very happy with the online banking sites they use – around eight in ten rate their experience as very good or excellent, with ASB recording an outstanding result (87 percent very good or excellent).

Chart 1: Proportion of customers who used online banking in the last month
Have you used online banking over the last four weeks?

Click to enlarge

About The Nielsen Online Consumer Finance Monitor

Nielsen’s Online Consumer Finance Monitor interviews 12,000 people per year (2,500 per quarter) using the Nielsen Your Voice Online panel, which is a dedicated market research panel. However, the last quarter in 2007 on which the above results are based had a boosted sample of 3,600 respondents. The margin of error for this quarter for the overall results is +/- 1.6%. To ensure the data is representative of the online population, the results are weighted on age, gender, region and frequency of Internet access.

About The Nielsen Company

The Nielsen Company is a global information and media company with leading market positions in marketing information (ACNielsen), media information (Nielsen Media Research), online intelligence (NetRatings and BuzzMetrics), mobile measurement, trade shows and business publications (Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Adweek). The privately held company is active in more than 100 countries, with headquarters in Haarlem, the Netherlands, and New York, USA. For more information, please visit, www.nielsen.com.

ENDS

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