Market Research for Finance, Banking & Insurance Brands

Why do customers stay with a bank they complain about and leave the one they just praised? We answer with applied market research for finance, banking, and insurance: brand tracking, customer experience evaluation, and opportunity studies. Recent work includes TBI Bank, OTP Leasing, Edenred, and TransferGo. See the full portfolio below.

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How we help finance, banking, and insurance teams decide with confidence

Financial decisions are rarely impulsive, and customers almost never explain them accurately in a direct interview. People say they chose the bank for the interest rate, then stay because the app works without friction and their salary already lands there. Market research with MKOR tells you what triggers distrust, what blocks customers from switching provider, and which segments the competition has not reached yet.

We work with banks, non-bank lenders, fintechs, and insurers. We turn actual customer behavior, not the declared version, into recommendations you can take to the product committee without dressing them up in storytelling.

Successful launches

A badly launched financial product cannot be pulled from the shelf. It quietly erodes trust for months. We validate the proposition before go-live through brand concept testing, check the live experience through product testing, and size demand with opportunity studies. Example: brand concept testing on the fintech market, where we identified which messaging sells and which raises suspicion from the first second.

Brand performance

When a customer shortlists three providers, are you on the list? If not, why not? We answer through continuous brand tracking, brand awareness research, and competitive analysis, with a focus on associations of trust, safety, and accessibility. Real work: brand tracking for Edenred in the prepaid cards market, where the perception shift directly shaped the annual communications plan.

Understanding the customer

A customer will rarely tell you the banking app frustrates them. They will still open it once a month and quietly take the new loan somewhere else. We combine usage and attitudes research with in-depth interviews and segmentation through consumer profiling, so you can see where the relationship breaks and which customers are worth building retention around. In the field: the customer perception and NPS analysis for Edenred, with clear differences between employers and end beneficiaries.

Digital efficiency

Loan applications get signed online at 2 a.m. If the flow breaks at step 4, nobody calls to tell you. We measure friction through consumer experience research across the app, the call center, and the onboarding flow. When the decision window is two weeks, we run agile research with results in days. In the field: the B2B opportunity study on the online payments market for PaySilvania.

Future of the market

The generation opening their first account today has never walked into a branch. They expect fee transparency, decisions inside the app, and support in chat rather than at a counter. We project these expectations through innovation and forecasting when you build a new product, and we quantify them through market opportunity analysis when you enter a new category. Example: the fintech market assessment for TransferGo.

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Common questions about finance, banking, and insurance research

How much does a brand tracking study cost for a bank?

Budget depends on sample size, geographic coverage, the number of brands tracked, and wave frequency. As a rough guide, a national brand tracking wave in the banking segment starts from a few thousand euros, and adding modules on specific categories (loans, savings, attached insurance) scales the price proportionally. For an accurate estimate we need a brief with objectives and audiences, so send us the project details and we will come back with numbers.

How do you measure consumer perception of fintech products?

We combine quantitative research on representative samples with in-depth interviews across active users, former users, and non-users. We evaluate trust associations, perceived safety, and fee clarity, and benchmark against traditional banks. When needed, we layer in usage and attitudes research to separate rational objections from emotional barriers.

What methods do you use to understand why customers do not switch banks?

Inertia in banking is rarely driven by a single factor. We run in-depth interviews with active customers and with those who declared an intent to switch but never followed through, plus consumer profiling to identify the segments with real migration potential. On the product side we add consumer experience research on the app and onboarding flow, because technical friction blocks conversion more often than the offer itself.

What does an opportunity study for a new financial product include?

Sizing of the addressable market, profiles of segments with real appetite, a competitive benchmark on offer, price, and positioning, and validation of the value proposition with target audiences. A standard opportunity study combines secondary data with primary quantitative and qualitative research. In fintech we often add concept testing on a wireframe or a live landing page through brand concept testing.

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