NAB nudges CBA on satisfaction scores

Commonwealth Bank's hard-headed home loan pricing decision of late 2010 continues to erode its gains in the customer satisfaction ratings published each month by Roy Morgan Research.

Among home loan customers, only CBA's score declined, by nine percentage points, between October 2010 and February 2011 - or more than four times the decline for the other three major banks.

The overall satisfaction rating for CBA continued to decline in February 2011, to 72.5 per cent, which  gives the bank only a very narrow lead over National Australia Bank (with a score of 72.2 per cent) which remains in fourth place out of the Big Four.

NAB's ranking, however, is up 2.9 percentage points over a year, though whether this is tied to initiatives on lower fees is hard to establish.

Westpac recorded a similar rise in customer satisfaction over a year, an indication that the irritation over outlandish rises in home loan interest rates (Westpac was the price leader, in late 2009) may be being progressively forgotten.

Norman Morris, industry communications director at Roy Morgan, pointed out that the gap in customer satisfaction between big banks and small banks continues to widen, albeit by a small degree, in favour of small banks.

Larger credit unions, which are now covered by this monthly report, showed a slight decline in their very high levels of customer satisfaction over a year, though Teachers Credit Union, in New South Wales, proved an exception to this rule.

Building societies showed a rise in customer satisfaction.