St George out of favour with business customers

St George Bank is being highlighted for all the wrong reasons in the latest round of business banking customer surveys. The bank is losing share and its satisfaction ratings are plummeting.

St George's share in the small and medium business market has fallen steadily over the past two years, according to the latest SME banking report from JP Morgan and Fujitsu.

This is in contrast to the big four, which have increased or held share over the same period.

JP Morgan banking analyst Scott Manning said St George developed a very good small business banking model at a time when the big banks were not so interested in the sector and there were fewer specialist providers like Rabo and Elders. But in the past couple of years the sector has become increasingly competitive.

Manning said: "St George was punching above its weight in the SME market and it was always going to be difficult for it to hold that share."

Manning said another factor was that St George had a big property finance business and would have been reducing its exposure to that sector over the past 18 months.

Reports from loan brokers have suggested that St George has become less flexible since the merger with Westpac, although bank executives have denied this.

The latest TNS business banking customer satisfaction report, published this week, shows St George dropping 21.2 percentage points in its satisfaction rating over the six months to May.

Commonwealth Bank and Westpac also suffered big falls in their satisfaction ratings (down 5.7 and 5.6 percentage points respectively) but nothing like the magnitude of the fall suffered by St George.

According to TNS, St George's rating of 67 per cent lags all the major banks.

TNS Business Finance Monitor manager Jenny Powell said the St George numbers tended to be more volatile than the big bank numbers because it had fewer customers in the survey. But even allowing for this it had suffered a big fall.

Powell said the question for the bank was whether it was losing its image as a small service-oriented bank as a result of the merger with Westpac.
 
Roy Morgan Research has a similar finding, although not nearly so dramatic, in its business banking satisfaction survey. St George suffered a five percentage point fall in its satisfaction score in the six months from September to March - the biggest fall in the survey.

St George still leads the big four banks in satisfaction in the Roy Morgan survey but it no longer enjoys the commanding lead it once had.

The only survey in which St George has held up well is the East & Partners business customer survey, which shows the bank with an improved rating over the past six months and holding second place to National Australia Bank in overall satisfaction.