NAB lifts, Westpac slips in monthly monitor

The changing pricing strategies of two banks are showing through in the regular monitoring of customer satisfaction by Roy Morgan Research.

National Australia Bank's reduction of some basic banking fees, and its better home loan pricing relative to peers, may be behind a lift of 2.8 percentage points in its customer satisfaction rating, to 71.1 per cent, in the regular Roy Morgan survey.

NAB had lagged the major banks in customer satisfaction rankings and is now more or less level with Westpac.

Westpac, which received adverse publicity over the above-market increase in its home loan rate in late 2009, is the only one of the major banks to suffer a decline in satisfaction over the last six months (down 1.4 percentage points to 71.3 per cent). This rating relates to customers with Westpac-branded products and not to those of the St George group of brands.

Customer satisfaction is improving for St George (including BankSA). Roy Morgan put its customer satisfaction at 78.5 per cent, slightly better than the ranking for ANZ.

Commonwealth Bank, which has linked bonuses of senior staff to improved outcomes on this Roy Morgan satisfaction score, has continued to close the gap to the ANZ.

The big four banks overall have increased the level of customer satisfaction by 1.7 percentage points over the last 12 months, and these scores are at their highest level in 14 years.

This hasn't stopped ANZ, and to some extent NAB, framing current advertising campaigns on the basis that customers are weary of poor service from their existing bank and that this dissatisfaction is a driver of new business.