Banks must now publish customer satisfaction figures Bankrate UK Caret RightMain Menu Mortgage Mortgages Financing a home purchase Refinancing your existing loan Finding the right lender Additional Resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Bank Banking Compare Accounts Use calculators Get advice Bank reviews Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Credit Card Credit cards Compare by category Compare by credit needed Compare by issuer Get advice Looking for the perfect credit card? Narrow your search with CardMatch Caret RightMain Menu Loan Loans Personal Loans Student Loans Auto Loans Loan calculators Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Invest Investing Best of Brokerages and robo-advisors Learn the basics Additional resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Home Equity Home equity Get the best rates Lender reviews Use calculators Knowledge base Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Loan Home Improvement Real estate Selling a home Buying a home Finding the right agent Additional resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Insurance Insurance Car insurance Homeowners insurance Other insurance Company reviews Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Retirement Retirement Retirement plans & accounts Learn the basics Retirement calculators Additional resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content John Keeble / Contributor August 17, 2018 Sebastian Anthony Bankrate logo
The Bankrate promise
At Bankrate we strive to help you make smarter financial decisions. While we adhere to strict editorial integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners. Here's an explanation for how we make money. Bankrate logo The Bankrate promise
Founded in 1976, Bankrate has a long track record of helping people make smart financial choices. We’ve maintained this reputation for over four decades by demystifying the financial decision-making process and giving people confidence in which actions to take next. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. All of our content is authored by and edited by , who ensure everything we publish is objective, accurate and trustworthy. Our banking reporters and editors focus on the points consumers care about most — the best banks, latest rates, different types of accounts, money-saving tips and more — so you can feel confident as you’re managing your money. Bankrate logo Editorial integrity
Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers. Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information. Bankrate logo How we make money
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers. We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money. Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. British banks will now have their customer satisfaction scores measured in four key areas. The results will be published every six months, and banks will have to prominently display the data to existing customers or those looking to . Every six months, around 1,000 customers from each bank will be asked whether they would recommend the bank in four key areas: online and mobile banking; overdraft services; in-branch; and overall. Updated results will be published every February and August. The results from the first survey, carried out between September 2017 and June this year, showed two clear winners: First Direct and Metro Bank, with overall satisfaction ratings of 85% and 83% respectively. Their overdraft services and banking apps also scored very highly – and Metro Bank topped the charts on in-branch service. The bottom of the table is populated with big high street banks like NatWest, TSB, HSBC, and the Royal Bank of Scotland. If you exclude First Direct, which doesn’t have branches, and Metro Bank, which only has a few dozen branches across the country, the top-ranking high street bank is Nationwide. Santander and Barclays did quite well, too. The full results can be found below. (The data was mostly gathered before , incidentally.) Why must the banks publish this data
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which tries to improve competition and prevent monopolies, has long had its eye on the UK’s banks. There’s around 70 million current accounts in the UK – and each year, around 1 million of those accounts are switched to a new provider. The true switching rate of how many people switch their primary accounts to a new bank is unknown, but estimates put it at around 3 to 5% per year. Compared to other utilities, such as broadband or energy, that’s an incredibly low switching rate – and thus the CMA is looking at ways of increasing competition in the banking space. By forcing banks to publish their customer satisfaction figures, it makes it a lot easier for you to shop around and make an informed decision to switch banks – and in turn, banks will hopefully fight to retain customers by improving their scores. Breaking down the scores into four separate areas could also be helpful if one aspect of banking – mobile or online banking, for example – is particularly important to you. Other changes to encourage customers to switch banks
The “would you recommend your bank?” data must be prominently displayed by all banks starting today. The CMA has also mandated that the “big nine” high street banks must implement , and that from February 2019 banks have to publish how long it takes for customers to open an account or replace a debit card. Separately, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is carrying out its own review of retail banking in the UK. Its current focus is on the exorbitant fees and charges that . Now read about , or our SHARE: Sebastian Anthony Related Articles