Westpac leads Big Four customer satisfaction, trails mutuals

The satisfaction level of the personal customers of banks, as measured by Roy Morgan Research, reached an eighteen-year record high of 82.4 per cent overall in October, up 0.4 per cent from September.

Westpac scored the highest satisfaction rate (81.5 per cent) of the Big Four for the first time in ten years.

In the six months to October, Westpac had the highest level of customer satisfaction of the Big Four among personal customers with 81.5 per cent, followed by CBA (81.2 per cent), NAB (81.0 per cent) and ANZ (79.9 per cent).

Business customers were less satisfied than the banks' retail customers, a pattern that has been observed by Roy Morgan for some time.  Here, again, Westpac retained top position for business customer satisfaction among the majors (72.3 per cent), followed by NAB (69.0 per cent), CBA (65.9 per cent) and ANZ (64.1 per cent).

Although the major banks have made some progress towards closing the gap in satisfaction between their business and personal customers, the business customers remain well behind (67.9 per cent compared to 81 per cent).

"The real satisfaction pacesetters in this banking market are the mutual banks with 89.9 per cent satisfaction compared to 81.0 per cent for the Big Four," said Norman Morris, industry communications director for Roy Morgan Research.

"There are many reasons for the mutual banks remaining well ahead of the Big Four, these include much higher ratings for things such as making customers feel valued, being transparent and honest about terms and conditions of their products and having fair and reasonable fees and charges," he said.