Personal banking customers experienced a 1.1 per cent rise in satisfaction in the last 12 months, pushing satisfaction levels recorded in the Roy Morgan Research Consumer Banking Satisfaction Report to an almost 18-year high.
The survey of 50,000 individuals revealed personal banking satisfaction levels hit 82.6 per cent in December, just short of the 82.8 per cent record high recorded in November 2014.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) topped the big four banks in customer satisfaction ratings, maintaining the lead with 81.6 per cent. Westpac (80.9 per cent) came a close second, followed by NAB (80.3 per cent) and ANZ (79.3 per cent).
“All the major banks have shown big improvements in customer satisfaction over more than a decade, to the point where they are now competing closely for top position, but very little separates them. The challenge now is for the big four banks to catch up with the considerably better scores of the smaller banks,” Norman Morris, Industry Communications Director, Roy Morgan Research, said.
“Other banks” were revealed to currently be holding a satisfaction level of 86.5 per cent, a 6.9 per cent increase from the results seen in 2005.
While general banking customers are exhibiting higher levels of satisfaction, big bank housing loan customers were found to have overall lower satisfaction ratings than other customers.
Bendigo saw the highest home loan customer satisfaction level with 93.2 per cent. Suncorp came in second place with 84.8 per cent, followed by Westpac (79.8 per cent), CBA (79.2 per cent), NAB (78.8 per cent) and ANZ (77 per cent).
“The flexibility of having many ways to more conveniently deal with banks has proven popular with customers and is likely to have contributed to increased satisfaction. Banks will be competing to become the leader in channel options and functionality as customers move away from branches which were the traditional strength of the big banks,” Mr Morris said.
“The increasing focus of banks to create a customer base with a high level of advocacy and improved cross-sell will need to be generated by higher levels of very satisfied customers.”
CBA customers were found to be the most likely to recommend their bank to others (51.6 per cent), followed by NAB (48.7 per cent), ANZ (46.7 per cent) and Westpac (46 per cent). A 96 per cent satisfaction level was registered among major bank customers that said they would likely recommend their bank to others.
