Biggest business banker the least popular

A puzzling feature of the two widely cited business banking customer satisfaction surveys, East & Partners and TNS, is the ranking of National Australia Bank among its big bank peers - first in the East & Partners survey and last in the TNS survey. Now a new survey from another research firm supports the TNS view on Australia's biggest business bank.

DBM Consultants yesterday launched a new monthly publication, Business Financial Services Monitor, which includes major bank satisfaction ratings. ANZ and Commonwealth are ranked equal first, followed by Westpac and NAB.

An interesting point of difference is that DBM has broken its survey group into four segments - micro, small, medium and large - and given ratings in each segment.

ANZ's support base is in the micro and small business segments, Commonwealth and NAB have their support bases in the large and medium segments and Westpac is the most consistent across the range.

One reason given for the anomalous rating of NAB in the TNS and East & Partners surveys is that the TNS survey population has a small business bias and the East & Partners sample has a bias towards the big end of town.

Both TNS and East & Partners deny this, saying they have broad representative samples.

DBM managing director Dhruba Gupta said he believed there were skews in the other surveys. "TNS leaves out the top five per cent of companies, while East & Partners starts at the top end and works down.

"We have tried to cover the spectrum and we have segmented it. What the segmentation shows is that some of the banks get a better rating from a large number of customers, while others do a better job with those that represent big dollars."

The DBM survey found that large and medium business had higher levels of satisfaction.

DBM has researched business banking for years but only recently elected to publicise its research and make some of it more widely available.

The latest TNS Business Finance Monitor also came out yesterday. TNS ranks ANZ first among the big banks, followed by Westpac, Commonwealth and NAB.

The TNS survey shows that business satisfaction ratings have started to pick up after dropping from late 2008 through to the end of last year. Over the past three months all the majors have gained ground, with Commonwealth Bank leading the way.