The satisfaction level of the big four banks’ customers in July was 79.7 per cent, up from 79.5 per cent in June, driven by a slight growth among their non-home loan customers and a minor drop in home-loan customers, according to Roy Morgan Research.
According to a study, the overall bank satisfaction level of 81.5 per cent in July was only slightly below the highest level ever recorded within the last 15 years when it achieved 82.9 per cent.
As far as the ‘big four’ group was concerned, ANZ turned out to show the biggest improvement, up 0.7 percentage points to 79.6 per cent, followed by the Commonwealth Bank (CBA), which improved by 0.2 percentage points to 81.4 per cent, with National Australia Bank remaining unchanged at 78 per cent and Westpac showing a drop of 0.4 percentage points to 77.7 per cent.
ANZ’s improvement was driven mainly by an increase in home-loan customers’ satisfaction, but it also recorded an increase in satisfaction levels among other customers.
According to Roy Morgan research, in general all four major banks experienced very similar levels of improvement in satisfaction over the last 15 years which proved that they were finding it difficult to gain a long-term advantage over their competitors.
Looking at the banks outside this group, Teachers Mutual was the best performer with 93.8 per cent satisfaction and was followed by Bank Australia (93.6 per cent) and Heritage Bank (92.1 per cent).
Roy Morgan Research industry communications director, Norman Morris, said that although majority of bank customers were satisfied, there were still some issues that needed to be addressed among the less than five per cent of clients that were classified as dissatisfied.
The main sources of dissatisfaction were fees and charges, poor service, branch issues, lack of empathy, insufficient staff, sales culture, and profit focus.
“The current spate of adverse publicity from political parties and the media regarding the need for banks to improve their behaviour fails to mention how banks are viewed by their customers,” Morris said.
“The focus instead appears to be on the need for a Royal Commission or some other type of additional reporting or investigation.
“Customers are obviously the final arbiter of how well they feel their banks are serving them, and if they are dissatisfied with their bank, they know they can switch to another one.”
