For decades, being a customer’s “primary bank” was relatively easy to define. It was where their checking account lived, their paycheck landed and their bills were paid. Today, that picture is much messier. Consumers routinely maintain relationships with multiple banks, credit unions and fintechs, dividing their financial lives among different providers based on rates, rewards, convenience or a particular need.
According to ABA Banking Journal’s “How customer primacy drives value in 2025”, the average customer now has accounts at two or more financial institutions, and 73% engage with banks other than their primary institution. Half of consumers who opened a checking account in 2024 had two or more checking accounts. So, what does it actually mean to be primary anymore?
Primary Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Exclusive
Primacy still matters. The ABA Banking Journal article cites Curinos research finding that primary customers generate eight times more fee revenue and hold 10 times more deposits than non-primary customers. But identifying those customers has become more complicated. Direct deposit, bill pay and checking activity remain important signals, but they don’t necessarily capture the full relationship when customers are spreading their financial lives across multiple providers.
Research from Curinos found that more than half of recent primary-bank switchers had more than four checking relationships. A customer might receive a paycheck at one bank, keep savings somewhere offering a better rate, use another institution’s credit card and turn to a fintech for payments. One institution may technically be “primary” without owning the entire relationship.
Customers Still Have a Primary Bank—But What Makes It Primary?
Consumers haven’t abandoned the concept altogether. Pinwheel’s 2026 Consumer Banking Trends report found that 89% of consumers still identify one institution as their primary provider. Forty-four percent define it as the place where their direct deposit lands, while 36% say it’s where they both receive direct deposit and pay most of their bills.
That raises an important question for banks and credit unions: Does your definition of a primary customer match your customers’ definition? Being the place where a paycheck arrives is valuable. Being the institution a customer trusts and relies on to manage their financial life is something more.
Account Data Tells Only Part of the Story
Banks can see deposits, transactions, product holdings and digital engagement. What those numbers can’t always explain is why a customer considers one institution primary—or what might cause that relationship to change. A customer can have an active checking account and still move savings elsewhere, turn to another institution for their next loan or gradually shift more of their financial life to a competitor.
Customer experience data can help fill in those gaps. Do customers actually consider your institution their primary financial provider? Which needs are they meeting elsewhere? What would make them deepen the relationship? When they need help or make an important financial decision, is your institution the first place they turn?
For community banks and credit unions, winning primacy may no longer mean capturing every financial product a customer uses. It may mean becoming the institution customers trust, rely on and think of first—and understanding where there are opportunities to earn more of the relationship.
The question is no longer simply, “Are we the customer’s primary bank?” It may be, “How much of the relationship have we actually earned?”