KEY POINTS:
A new bank satisfaction survey has thrown up some incongruous results.
Banks where satisfaction has gone up have lost customers , while the converse is also true.
This was particularly apparent with ANZ and National Bank, which was taken over by the former in December 2003.
ANZ's customer satisfaction rate rose significantly from a lowly 66.3 per cent in September 2003 to 73.5 per cent in September 2006.
But the number of customers who use ANZ as their main financial institution (MFI) fell 7.9 per cent to 446,000, according to surveyor Roy Morgan NZ.
Conversely, National's satisfaction rate dropped 3 percentage points to 81.3 per cent, but it had a 11.9 per cent lift in customers to 544,000.
ANZ's MFI market share fell 2.6 percentage points to 15.3 per cent, while National's rose 0.7 to 18.6 per cent.
Roy Morgan finance sector director Leslie Morton said there was often a significant lag between what customers are currently experiencing and them actually shifting banks.
TSB, which despite maintaining an extraordinarily high customer satisfaction level, 95.5 per cent, has not translated that into significant customer growth.
Its MFI numbers have growth 8.5 per cent but remains at a relatively low 77,000 and its MFI market share was static on 2.6 per cent.
TSB has only recently gone national, Mr Morton noted. He said its very high satisfaction rate in its Taranaki base had polled even higher in areas outside Taranaki, such as Auckland.
Kiwibank has seen its high satisfaction rate slip to 88.9 per cent from 92 per cent in 2003 but its MFI numbers had leapt from 41,000 to 129,000 and its market share rose from 1.5 per cent to 4.4 per cent.
Westpac, which has been making huge public efforts to increase its satisfaction rate has had very little success, according to the survey.
Over three years, satisfaction remained at the bottom of the pack at 68.2 per cent, just up from 68 per cent three years ago and that is within the margin of error.
It experienced a 3.7 per cent drop in MFI customers to 571,000 and its MFI market share fell 2.4 percentage points to 19.5 per cent.
Westpac remains the laggard in Australia too, but over there its satisfaction rating lifted significantly to 70.4 per cent.
BNZ's satisfaction rate rose 4.4 points to 77.8 per cent and its customer numbers rose 11.9 per cent to 544,000, while its MFI share was steady at 13.4 per cent.
ASB retained top satisfaction spot among the main banks, with its rating steady at 83.6 per cent. It added 9.7 per cent MFI customers to 496,000 and its market share edged up from 16.7 per cent to 17 per cent.
Mr Morton noted that in Australia, customer satisfaction had translated into growth for Australian banks, particularly for the smaller institutions, Bank of Queensland and Bendigo Bank.
"These gains tend to be associated with very high levels of MFI customer satisfaction, compared to the other major Australian banks."
Mr Morton said TSB's failure to translate its consistently extremely high levels of MFI customer satisfaction into high customer numbers could be attributed to the success of Kiwibank which had spread rapidly through access to customers at NZ Post branches throughout the country.
Roy Morgan planned to release its surveys quarterly.
- NZPA
