The reputation among business customers of "regional" bank brands owned by major banks is not as strong as those of genuine regional banks, research by consultants DBM suggests.A monthly monitor of businesses' satisfaction with their banks compiled by DBM shows "a very significant and consistent difference" between the scores for what the firm terms "independent regionals" and "other" banks.The former include Bendigo, Bank of Queensland and Suncorp. The latter include BankWest (owned by Commonwealth Bank), St George and BankSA (the last two brands of Westpac.The differences are reasonably significant on the DBM scale, which otherwise struggles to display much difference in the views of business customers, overall, about the big banks.On the DBM ranking independent regional banks all rate 8 or slightly better on a scale from 0 to 10.Big banks rate around 7 and their allied regional brands only slightly better.DBM noted, in its monthly commentary, that regional banks fare better on reputation scores among micro-business customers that turn over less than $1 million, and also with small business (turnover of between $1 million and $5 million).The findings are of interest given the investment by Westpac in the revival of the Bank of Melbourne brand in Victoria, where the bank considers there is untapped demand for access to trusted regional bank brands.