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After eight interest rate cuts in two years, consumer satisfaction with the big banks is at its highest level in almost two decades.
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According to Roy Morgan research, overall satisfaction levels for the banks reached 81.3 per cent in November, a marginal increase from 81.2 per cent in October, but enough to achieve the highest level in the 18 years of the survey.
In the six months to November 2013, CBA maintained its top ranking of the big four, with 81.9 per cent satisfaction, followed by NAB (79.4 per cent), Westpac (79.0 per cent) and ANZ (77.2 per cent).
The greatest improver in the past month was NAB (up 1.2 per cent), followed by CBA (up 0.6 per cent).
Westpac (down 0.4 per cent) and ANZ (down 0.3 per cent) showed small declines over the past month.
While the main driver of the improvement in customer satisfaction among the big four over the past 12 months has been the reduction in home loan interest rates, industry communications representative at Roy Morgan, Norman Morris, said the increased use of internet banking is also a contributing factor.
“The eight interest rate reductions in home loans over the last two years are now having a very positive impact on the satisfaction of home loan customers, and as such are contributing to the improvement in overall satisfaction results,” said Mr Morris.
“But as would be expected, they are not having a positive impact on deposit customers and, in fact, the non-home loan customers’ satisfaction for the ANZ, NAB and Westpac have all declined.
“The increased use of internet banking has contributed to increased satisfaction overall because customer satisfaction with this channel now exceeds their satisfaction with branches for each of the big four banks.”
