- 11. März 2021

Comscore Snapshots: online finance in Europe

In this week’s edition of Comscore Snapshots, we look at the consumption of finance-related services in Europe. Our analysis includes statistics for the EU5 region, which includes France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Scope: We include websites and mobile apps that provide financial services such as online payments, banking, trading, insurance, personal finance, and investments. Examples include Paypal, Societe General, and La Caixa.

Top line observations:

Broadly speaking, online financial websites and apps subdivide into six categories: banking, payments, financial services & advice, Insurance, Investments and taxes. Online banking is the largest category in terms of audience size, followed by payments. Moreover, the habit of accessing financial services solely through devices is now firmly entrenched: mobile-only audience sizes are larger than desktop-only and dual access audiences, across all categories.


Table 1. Finance sites and apps audiences in the EU5 region (Million unique visitors)

Desktop-only

Mobile-only

Dual access

(mobile and desktop)

Total

Total Financial Services

55.7

79.3

31.7

166.6

Banking

45.8

71.9

15.9

133.6

Payments

24.5

50.0

4.9

79.4

Financial Services & Advice

11.5

27.9

2.6

42.0

Insurance

14.4

14.8

1.4

30.6

Investments

7.1

8.0

0.8

15.9

Taxes

4.0

4.3

0.3

8.6

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Jan 2021, EU5 region.

Another measure of how enthusiastically consumers access online financial services is reflected by the average time spent on them. In the EU5 region average time spent grew across all finance categories, except banking. Time spent on online payments services more than doubled between January 2020 and January 2021. Another interesting trend is the increase in time spent on investment services, which reflects a global trend of online trading among retail investors.

Table 2. Online finance usage intensity: time (in minutes) per visitor per month.

Jan-2020

Jan-2021

% Change

Total Financial Services

67.3

79.3

17.8

Investments

26.2

51.9

98.0

Payments

24.6

50.7

106.3

Banking

48.2

46.3

-3.9

Taxes

11.8

14.2

20.6

Insurance

9.9

12.4

25.2

Financial Services & Advice

10.2

8.6

-15.7

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Jan 2020 – Jan 2021, EU5 region.

The trend of the unbundling of financial services stemming from the growth of fintech startups appears to be on hold, at least for now: the latest rankings of online finance services shows that traditional banks occupy most of the top spots.

Table 3. Selection of top online finance sites or apps with highest % reach

Country

Entity

France

Groupe Credit Agricole, Labanquepostale.fr, Groupe Credit Mutuel

Germany

PayPal, Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, Commerzbank Sites

Italy

Gruppo Poste Italiane, PayPal, Intesa Sanpaolo

Spain

La Caixa, Grupo BBVA, Grupo Santander

United Kingdom

PayPal, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Moneysupermarket.com Financial Group

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Jan 2021, EU5 region.