Australia's ‘Big Four' banks are lagging behind smaller financial institutions when it comes to consumer satisfaction a new report reveals.
The Roy Morgan Research Consumer Banking Satisfaction Report July 2014 found the Commonwealth Banks of Australia (CBA) was leading the way for the major banks, despite the recent scandal surrounding its financial planning arms, with a satisfaction rating to 81.5 per cent – down 0.6 per cent on the June result.
Of the other major banks, Westpac had the biggest improvement in its customer satisfaction rate gaining 0.3 per cent to 80.2 per cent, ahead of NAB (80 per cent) and ANZ (79.2 per cent).
However, the data revealed that the ‘Big Four' (80.5 per cent) were behind the mutual banks (87.9 per cent), building societies (91.6 per cent), overseas banks (85.8 per cent) and credit unions (90.8 per cent), in terms of consumer satisfaction.
IMB Building Society scored the top rating in the July Consumer Banking Report, with a 93.9 per cent rating, followed by the Western Australia-based P&N Bank (93.5 per cent).
Key factors for the disparity between consumers' satisfaction ratings for the major banks compared with other financial institutions related to the fairness of fees and interest rates they charged, Roy Morgan industry communications director, Norman Morris said.
"While satisfaction with the big four banks has increased greatly over the last thirteen years, there is still room for improvement among the major banks as is evidenced by the performance of their much smaller competitors who are seen as outperforming them on a number of important dimensions, particularly in relation to fees and charges, interest rates and treatment of customers," he said.
"While it still remains a priority among the major banks to lift consumer satisfaction overall, we have seen in recent analysis that two important groups are rating their banks below average.
"These groups are business customers and the top value quintile personal customers, both of which have big potential for business growth but are far less satisfied than the lower value customers and as such should increasingly become the focus of improving satisfaction levels."
