Kiwi-owned banking services come out on top

CONSUMER MEDIA RELEASE

10 October 2006

Kiwi-owned banking services come out on top

Kiwi-owned TSB and PSIS lead in customer satisfaction ratings in a new Consumer member survey. Both scored a near-perfect 98% approval rating from their customers. Respondents cited “speaking to a real person” and “friendly prompt service” as the main reasons for satisfaction.

ASB, Kiwibank and National Bank follow closely with over 90% approval ratings. BNZ, ANZ and Westpac trailed, all scoring below the average approval rating of 84%.

The lowest satisfaction rating was for HSBC, with only 47% of customers rating their performance as good or very good. Their customers found HSBC’s telephone banking over-complicated, and some found it difficult to communicate with call centre staff. While only 12% of respondents had problems with their bank in the past 12 months, a massive 42% of HSBC customers reported problems with poor customer service.

“HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, so it’s surprising its New Zealand arm does consistently poorly in our surveys” said David Russell of Consumers’ Institute. “Kiwibank shows what can be done by a nationwide bank. This relatively new bank has always scored highly for customer service in our surveys.”

The Consumer study is the largest survey of its kind, with over 8,200 respondents from a random selection of 12,000 Consumer subscribers.

The full bank survey report is available at www.consumer.org.nz

ENDS

© Scoop Media