Despite a growing list of problems within the bank and its associated businesses, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is still holding its place ahead of National Australia Bank (NAB), Westpac, and ANZ as the bank with the highest amount of satisfied customers, according to research house, Roy Morgan.
Concerns over poor advice from Commonwealth Financial Planning, which saw the bank pay out $29 million in June, yesterday’s announcement from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) that offset insurance arm, CommInsure, would be fined $300,000 over misleading advertising, and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre’s (AUSTRAC) continued investigations into more than 53,000 breaches of money laundering and counter-terrorism laws have yet to show a significant impact on customer sentiment.
Even with a more significant decline (-2.4 per cent) than was experienced last month, Roy Morgan figures showed CBA’s satisfaction ranking sat at seventh, with 79.6 per cent, ahead of NAB (78.3 per cent), Westpac (78.1 per cent) and ANZ (77.5 per cent).
“The small banks have much higher satisfaction with their home loan customers than do those with the big four. This remains a big challenge for the majors as they generally attract most of the negative publicity surrounding interest rate increases, profit announcements and customer problems,” said Roy Morgan industry communications director, Norman Morris.
“Satisfaction with banks was trending up strongly between 2001 and 2014 and over the last three years it has plateaued rather than showing any real signs of a decline.”
The larger banks which recorded the highest level of customer satisfaction were Bendigo Bank (88.1 per cent), Bank of Queensland (85.2 per cent), and ING (84.8 per cent), all of which still saw a slide in ratings since November.
The only bank in Roy Morgan’s top ten comparison that saw an increase in customer satisfaction this month was Westpac, up 1.4 per cent.
