As a Washington Mutual account holder, my greatest concern about WaMu’s viability became a reality last Friday. WaMu, known for its breezy “WhooHoo!” advertising and bright colors, was no more, and now I am officially an account holder at JP Morgan Chase. I immediately logged onto wamu.com to see what information Chase was providing for potentially nervous WaMu customers (this would have been prior to reading the Q&A guide posted on the FDIC’s website) and I noticed a bit of a quick fix update of the homepage.

I totally get that Chase probably didn’t have a ton of time to work on the homepage redesign so this is not meant to be a criticism. After all, the message is loud and clear although some WaMu customers may feel a little like their financial future is a bit blurry like the little boy in the graphic.
Then a second even more surprising blow hit this Friday with the acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo. This made me think that with all the acquisitions happening, maybe Bank of America would have to give up its #1 spot online to either Chase or Wells Fargo? And, from an online perspective, is this acquisition a good move for Chase and Wells Fargo?
Below was the online landscape among these competitors just 10 days ago. Prior to the acquisition, in terms of the number of active online account managers*, the rankings among top competitors in August were:

1. Bank of America with approximately 18.5M active online account managers
2. Chase with approximately 15.9M active online account managers
3. Citi with approximately 11M active online account managers
4. Wells Fargo with approximately 9.7 active online account managers

In August, Bank of America had the largest share at 25%, followed by Chase with 21%, Citi with 14%, and Wells Fargo with 13% among the top 10 competitors. Both WaMu and Wachovia had a much smaller share of 7% each.

Post-acquisition, Chase now takes the top spot with 28% share of active online account managers outpacing Bank of America by 3% points.

However, looking closer at both Chase and WaMu’s online account manager base, there may be less opportunity due to overlapping customers. For example, a customer who may hold two accounts, one at WaMu and one at Chase may consolidate their finances with Chase. In August, about 4% of WaMu’s online account managers were already a Chase customer, which means that although Chase is still #1 it is by a slimmer margin if you take into account these overlapping customers. There is a 1%overlap for Wachovia customers who bank with Wells Fargo.

It should be interesting to see if WaMu and Wachovia customers, especially those who have never been a Chase or Wells Fargo customers previously, flee to a competitor. One thing is for sure that both Chase and Wells Fargo need to engage with its newly acquired customer base early on and often if they want to retain their business.

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