Missing bank found in survey

Photo / Richard Robinson

The case of the missing bank has been solved.

Last week, the Herald on Sunday was inundated with reader complaints that Kiwibank had been left out of a survey of bank customers conducted by financial services sector union Finsec.

"Two words - Kiwibank. What happened?" wrote Colin Taylor. "When you start including Kiwibank in the customer surveys then you will find out about real customer ratings."

Finsec spokesman Andrew Campbell said the online survey was conducted by Sydney-based research house Essential Research, in conjunction with the union's Australian counterparts.

"[The research company] made an error in the New Zealand league tables by excluding Kiwibank," he said. In fact, Kiwibank was included in the survey, as was Taranaki's TSB Bank.

Roughly the same proportion of Kiwibank customers responded as the other main banks, but the number of TSB customers was statistically too small so was included in the "other" category.

Kiwibank performed well in the survey with 80 per cent of its customers saying they were satisfied with the bank. This compared with 86 per cent for other banks, 56 per cent for ASB, 46 per cent for BNZ, 42 per cent for National Bank, and 40 per cent for both ANZ and Westpac.

However, it was one of the worst on some specific customer service issues, such as queuing - 63 per cent of its customers said they always had to wait in a queue or on hold to get served. The best performing banks in this category were the other banks, with just 18 per cent of their customers saying they always had to queue or hold.

The survey has come under fire for its size - 658 people filled out the complete form - and for being self-selecting. Finsec said it promoted the survey through the media and its own membership.

Kiwibank spokesman Bruce Thompson said TSB usually scored best in customer satisfaction surveys but Kiwibank was always "hot on its heels".

ANZ spokeswoman Astrid Smeele said the bank's internal satisfaction surveys showed customers rated it overall as 8.5 out of 10.

This was based on nearly 7000 customers replying to surveys over the past six months.

Taking into account the Finces survey was not based on random sampling and had a high margin of error the results were "meaningless", she said.

In defence of Kiwi

* "Why on earth aren't Kiwibank and Taranaki Savings Bank in the survey?? Outrageous." - Rewi Kemp

* "Why wasn't Kiwibank included in the survey? I can only assume that the Aussies didn't want to know how well Kiwibank is doing." - Peter Bosson

* "... The two truly New Zealand banks weren't mentioned - Taranaki Savings Bank, and Southland Building Society Bank!! Which really invalidated the "survey"." - Lois'

* "It is disgraceful the way you have purposely left out the best and most friendly bank in the country ... TSB is by far the best in all categories." - John Hart