In this section we share the key results of all the customer reviews that you have submitted. We look at the overall scores, the strengths and weaknesses, and compare banks and building societies.

We want to share our findings and help create a more ethical financial service industry, and help banks and building societies improve!

To see how we calculate the scores for each bank, building society, category and questions please see our methodology page.

Overall scores

Looking at the overall scores, the range of results, currently 67% to 87%, highlights the significant variation in customer experience between different organisations. Moreover, banks appear to perform worse than building societies – all the banks scores are below average.

 

 

Scores by category 

The customers we spoke to consistently rated brand, follow up and pricing as poor. The scores for these customer-facing dimensions were below average for both banks and building societies. On the other hand, day-to-day contact with customer advisors and the products appear to meet consumer needs.

 

Strengths and weaknesses

To understand strengths and weaknesses, we examined the range of results for each question. Thus, we can see what customers are most satisfied and dissatisfied with.

For example, vast majority of customers could reach a sales advisor during the sales process and find the employees polite. Most customers also find the products simple and easy to use. The percentage of negative responses (red) in these areas is very low.

Customer responses also highlighted the areas that require improvement. For example, the key grievance is that there are no rewards for loyalty. Customers also do not relate to the marketing and advertising campaigns and do not find pricing transparent or reasonable.

It is also important to take into account the polarity of the opinions. Although only 29% of people think that pricing is unreasonable (red), more than half are not satisfied (red and blue).

 

 

 

Banks versus building societies

On average the building societies score 66% whereas banks score 47%. This is a significant disparity. In order to understand the reasons for this we compared the scores for individual questions.

Areas where building societies perform much better than banks include complaint resolution, ability to reach a customer advisor, understanding of customer’s needs, community involvement and trust. The scores for these questions are 15-20% higher for the building societies.

It turns out that according to the current reviews, there are no areas, where banks perform better than the building societies!

 

Summary

Pricing, sales process and brand are the weakest points; service and products – the strongest.

• Absence of rewards for loyalty, non-transparent pricing and irrelevant advertising cited as top issues

Building societies surveyed had higher customer satisfaction than the banks

• Average score for building societies 85%, average score for banks 74%
• Norwich & Peterborough and Coventry Building Societies scored highest overall

To see the above analysis become more accurate, please fille out out online Rate Your Bank Questionnaire !