Financial services companies group customers in all sorts of ways – by sex, life stage, geography, products and (most popular of all) by how much money they have.

The common rationale for splitting by assets is clear – arguably the more money a person has the more complex services they are likely to need (probability speaking).

To be frank, no single definition exists for these segments – each of the main banks looks at asset-based groupings slightly differently, yet a common language exists in terms of name types – super high net worth, high net worth, mass affluent, core affluent and core.

You will note the absence of the word “poor” in any of the segments.

All businesses tend to languish love and attention on their favorite clients, the high net worth and super high net worth, for obvious reasons – it’s highly profitable and it’s easy to see how firms make money from them.

The mass affluent – loosely those who earn more than $100,000 a year and depending on how you cut the numbers there are about 3.2 million in Australia – are a little more difficult to understand, service, satisfy and drive to profitability.

This is not because they are not profitable – on a single dimensional level they are often highly profitable, have biggish mortgages, run multiple credit cards, have consumer insurance, using intermediary services, pay thousands into superannuation and are responsible for a large chunk of retail banking profits.

One of the core problems though is that banks don’t see them with a single view but rather they see them only in product silos.

They are either, deposit customers, mortgage customers, card customers or insurance customers – not ever a single customer with a discrete set of needs.

Each of the banks has tried to solve this via technology – spending millions on CRM systems and by building relationship-based channels under various titles “personal bankers, private bankers, gold segment customer managers and relationship managers”.

The problems with such channels are that they have, by and large, using all the measures we can use to measure customer satisfaction failed across the board.

Last month we asked 5,000 Australians earning more than $100,000 per annum important if they had a relationship manager, and for those who did, if they were happy

The broad response was apathy and lack of enthusiasm.

The data was very clear – none of the banks are making a success of managing mass affluent customers.

In fact the research reveals that Australia’s mass affluent market is undervalued, unloved and uninspired by their relationship with their bank.

On reflection key drivers behind the lack of enthusiasm are in part constructed by the expectations of the mass affluent market, namely in seeking to be treated as important, different, special and better and also because they are desperately seeking utility.

One core finding from the research is that Australia’s mass affluent market generally understands banking and banking services, many in this group understand the cost and service trade-off and therein they clearly understand utility – the basic concept of getting value for the money they spend.

Stunningly it seems that is the piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is missing from much of the industry – the clear articulation of what customers are paying for what they are receiving and benefitting from as result of their spend.