In April, we introduced the Financial Services Monthly Performance scorecard produced by Compete. It summarizes the overall performance of 23 large U.S. financial institutions and lead-generation sites. Refer here for the detailed methodology as well as companies tracked. 

Overall June highlights:

• Traffic of financial shoppers was up across all product types except high-yield savings which dropped 2%.
• More important, applications were up across all products ranging from 3% in savings to 26% in mortgage refinance.
• A total of 2.9 million product applications were booked; 200,000 more than the 2.7 million last month.

Specific financial institution performance:

• Bank of America improved its credit card conversion rates dramatically, booking a 30% increase in applications despite only 10% growth in shopping traffic.
• In checking accounts ING Direct, WaMu, and Wells Fargo all increased the volume of prospects looking at checking account options. 
• Emigrant, HSBC and ING Direct were all able to increase application volumes despite a flat or declining volume of potential prospects.
• Home equity prospect traffic grew at 12 of 16 providers and conversion rates were improved at 10 of 16. Bank of America, Citibank, Countrywide and Low.com had the largest month-over-month percentage gains in both prospect and application volume (note 1). 
• In home-purchase mortgages, Low.com nearly doubled its prospect traffic compared to May, while significantly improving lead conversion.
• In mortgage refinance, Low.com also posted the largest percentage gain in prospects but grew applications at a lower rate, resulting in a significant decline in conversion. Quicken Loans showed greater efficiency, almost doubling application volume with roughly the same number of prospects as in May.

Note:

1. For loan products, leads from lead-generation sites such as Low.com are combined with actual applications at financial institutions into a single "lead/application" category shown in the table.