(11th November 2003 – Sydney) Despite their much publicised efforts to improve client service, Australia’s Big Four banks are struggling to meet the demands of their corporate customers on relationship banking issues, an East & Partners report finds.
East’s Corporate Banking Customer Satisfaction report shows a gulf exists
between Top 500 Corporate CFOs’ expectations on relationship banking and the
service they are receiving.
Of the 26 product and service factors assessed in the report, corporate and
institutional CFOs identified the five most important factors in their banking
relationships as being:
-
Loyalty to the Relationship
(1.06 on the 1-5 rating scale) -
Quality of Bank’s People & Understanding Business
Needs (1.07) -
Understanding Industry Sector & Particular
Industry Expertise (1.10) -
Account (Relationship) Management (1.11)
- Funds Management (1.12)
However, the high importance rating was not matched by the satisfaction
scores recorded by CFOs, with Understanding Industry Sector (2.63), Account
Management (2.93), and Quality of Bank’s People (2.49) being particularly marked
down.
East & Partners principal analyst Paul Dowling said effective client
relationship management was key to banks unlocking more and higher value
business in Australia’s hyper-competitive markets.
“Having a richly featured product offering is no longer any guarantee of success
for banks, as customers are increasingly demanding that product comes
service-wrapped,” he said.
“It’s not all doom and gloom, however, as the latest results show the banks are
steadily improving their service performance. There’s still a long way to go but
at least the banks are now clearly committed to raising their game in this
area,” Mr Dowling said.
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“The fact that only three banks – BNP Paribas, Commonwealth Bank and St George –
scored better than average whole-of-relationship customer satisfaction ratings
serves to highlight CFOs’ dissatisfaction with banks’ relationship management
performance.
“Of the major domestic banks, Commonwealth Bank and St George appear to be
improving their performance in relationship banking while ANZ has slipped a
little overall but improved in the areas of innovation and relationship loyalty.
Westpac and National still have a fair amount of work to do to improve their
relationship banking performance, but are both clearly making inroads,” Mr
Dowling said.
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