Foreign banks out of favour

While the big four continue to slug it out for bagging rights as the bank with the most satisfied customers, and the gap between them narrows, a different trend has emerged among the foreign-owned banks, where there is a spread of almost 30 percentage points between the top and bottom performers.

According to the latest Roy Morgan consumer banking customer satisfaction survey, ING Direct maintains its position as the country's most popular bank with a satisfaction rating of 86.9 per cent.

HSBC has suffered a 2.3 percentage point falling in its rating over the past year and has a score of 73.7 per cent.

But the real laggard is Citibank, whose rating has plunged 8.3 percentage points in the past year. It has a satisfaction rating of 58.9 per cent.

The spread of satisfaction scores among the big four is less than five percentage points. ANZ leads the group with a score of 75.1 per cent, followed by Commonwealth Bank, with 72.9 per cent, Westpac (71.8 per cent) and National Australia Bank (70.3 per cent).

Of the four, Westpac has had the weakest performance over the past year and will slip behind NAB later this year if the current trend continues.

While retail customers have given their banks higher satisfaction ratings over the past year, the latest TNS business banking customer satisfaction report shows that banks have lost ground with their business customers. There was a 3.8 percentage point fall in overall business customer satisfaction in the 12 months to March and a 6.7 percentage point decline in the average rating of the majors.

ANZ leads the big four in the TNS survey, with a satisfaction rating of 73.4 per cent, followed by Westpac, at 71.3 per cent, Commonwealth (67.5 per cent) and NAB (67.1 per cent).

Bendigo & Adelaide Bank has the highest overall rating in the TNS survey, with a satisfaction score of 91.5 per cent.