The debate around neobanks is often framed the wrong way.
The question is no longer whether they will replace traditional banks. The issue runs deeper: how are neobanks gradually shifting the banking relationship towards other use cases, other interfaces and new habits?
Customers are not massively leaving their traditional banks. They are shifting a growing part of their financial lives elsewhere: payments, cards, foreign exchange, transfers, budget management, savings, investments, services for freelancers and independent professionals, and the first financial interactions of younger generations.
This is where the issue becomes strategic.
A bank may retain its customers’ accounts while losing frequency. It may retain the account while losing usage. It may preserve the contractual relationship while losing the lived relationship.
Between 2021 and 2026, the share of wallet held by the primary bank fell from 78% to 64%. And fewer than one in two annual product subscriptions is still made with the primary bank. The signal is therefore not only commercial: it is behavioral.
What is eroding is not just market share. It is the bank’s central role in the customer relationship: everyday gestures, behavioral data, mobile preference and moments of decision. In a banking model increasingly driven by data and AI, every lost use becomes a lost signal. And every lost signal reduces the ability to advise, anticipate and remain relevant.
The issue extends beyond neobanks in the strict sense. Online banks backed by banking groups, specialized fintechs, investment platforms, payment players, Big Tech and, tomorrow, AI assistants are each attacking a different layer of the value chain: usage, interface, data, relationship, advice or balance sheet.
Traditional banks still retain considerable assets: trust, balance sheet strength, deposits, credit, long-term savings, insurance, wealth, advisory capabilities, compliance and support in complex moments. Their challenge is therefore not to copy neobanks. It is to make these assets more visible, more seamless and more useful in the customer experience.
The next banking battle will not be fought between “old” and “new” players. It will be fought between relationship models: those that remain useful in high-frequency use cases, decisive in complex moments, capable of turning data into advice and able to orchestrate a fragmented financial ecosystem.
For banking Executive Committees, the question is no longer: what do we need to digitize?
It becomes: where must we become indispensable again?
This white paper offers a strategic reading of this shift and a roadmap for banks that want to rebuild their centrality: redefine the value proposition of the primary bank, industrialize critical digital journeys, use data and AI to augment the relationship, turn compliance into a source of trust, reposition advisors on moments when human expertise truly creates value, and build the ability to orchestrate uses, partners and decisions.
Neobanks are not replacing banks.
They are taking what matters from them: usage, frequency, data and preference.
This is precisely where transformation must begin.
At OZEIA, we support leaders at moments when strategy, value, execution, human transformation and operating model must be considered together.
Our role is to help organizations clarify their positioning, prioritize the battles they need to fight, and turn their historical assets into advantages that are visible, useful and genuinely differentiated.
