Banks satisfaction scores show mixed results

Tuesday February 2, 2010

Banks customer satisfaction levels have reported mixed results according to the latest monthly monitor data published by Roy Morgan research.

Overall the most positive results were reserved for National Australia Bank who has taken several fee-cutting measures over recent months in a bid to increase their customer satisfaction. Based on the positive results for the bank it appears to be working after the research figures posted an increase in over the last 12 months to December 2009 for NAB of 2.2 percentage points.

The rise in satisfaction was clearly even across both home loan and non-home customers for the big bank, a trend that was not seen across the other three major brands. This improvement in the NAB's satisfaction ratings has been attributed to their fee-cutting activities that occurred in the end of 2009 where the bank cut nuisance fees on everyday bank accounts including overdraft fees to small business customers and abolishing overdrawn fees to personal accounts.

The changes to the overdrawn fees system now allows for business customers to overdraw their account by $1,000 with no fee while a $50 fee for having insufficient funds for recurring scheduled payments was also cut.

This followed a move to cut overdrawn fees to small business customers; a move is estimated to cost the bank around $40 million in revenue with around 500,000 small business customers expected to benefit from the fees cut.
NAB's resistance to raise interest rates with the Reserve Bank has also been pegged as a popular move by customers.

It should be noted that while NAB may have improved its banks image, it still ranked fourth among the big four banks.

Roy Morgan research results for the Big Four banks were as follows:

• ANZ leads customer satisfaction rates with a competent level of 74.8 percentage points although it is also the only major bank brand to report a decline, leading to predictions of negative results for the next report
• National Australia Bank customer satisfaction rose 2.2 per cent for both home loan and non-home customers
• Westpac held second place but has closed the gap significantly with third place Commonwealth Bank from a gap of 2.1 percentage points 12 months ago to only 0.9 percentage points
• Westpac mortgage customer satisfaction levels are actually up 2.9 percentage points but are predicted to fall significantly as the effect of the banks major rate rises takes effect
• Commonwealth Bank rose 1.9 percentage points for overall customer satisfaction but dropped 1.3 percentage points in the satisfaction level of its home loan customers.

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