Survey Finds Consumer Trust in Banks Remains High Despite Recent Collapses
A recent Morning Consult survey found that Americans’ trust in banks has remained high, despite the collapse of Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), and Silvergate Capital Corp. 7 in 10 survey respondents said they trust banks, and most bank customers said they are at least somewhat confident that their deposits are safe.
About one-third of bank customers said they’re very confident in their banks’ ability to provide all the money in their accounts if they requested it, while only 5 percent said they’re “not confident at all.” After the recent bank collapses, 20 percent of adults moved some or all of their money from their account to somewhere like their home or a safe, and 15 percent moved some or all of it to another bank.
“The share of consumers moving specifically because of SVB’s collapse is not alarming, but the share of adults withdrawing their money from banks is certainly surprising,” said Charlotte Principato, Morning Consult’s Financial Services Analyst. She also observed that owners of cryptocurrency were the main contributors of the latter trend.
Customers of digital banks were less likely to trust them at 57 percent, and 36 percent said they don’t trust digital banks. Trust in credit unions was right behind respondents’ trust in banks at 69 percent, but 44 percent of Americans said they don’t trust digital credit unions.
The survey also found that high-income households were more likely to trust the government to support failing banks, but that confidence was lowest among customers of digital banks. Adults in households earning more than $100,000 were likely to say they’re “very confident” about government intervention, while only 15 percent of digital bank customers said the same.
While only 28 percent of respondents said they expected the recent bank collapses to impact them personally, big banks are experiencing an increase in new customers. According to the Financial Times, Bank of America Corp. recently gathered over $15 billion in new deposits as customers moved their money to an assumedly safe bank.
