Online Banking is as good as Amazon and eBay

The fourth Foresee
online financial services survey came out today, benchmarking banking
websites for their engagement and satisfaction with the user. 

What
it finds is that online banking websites score 82 in overall
satisfaction, a 12% improvement since 2003, and the best of the
websites for financial services available online.  This is a great
score, as e-retailers only benchmark at 83.  According to the report,
online banks are getting the balance just right between convenience,
value, information and transactions.

Apparently, where
customers are ‘highly satisfied’ in their banking experiences, 31% are
more likely to purchase more, and 57% are more likely to use the
website as their primary channel for the bank.   

Whilst the banking websites get a rating of 82, investment and credit card websites score 75.

Highly
satisfied investment website users are 68% more likely than others to
recommend the investment service to their friends.  Similarly, highly
satisfied online credit card users are 47% more likely to use this card
as their primary credit card and 66% more likely to recommend the card
to others.   

The headline I keep coming back however is that 12% improvement to a benchmark of 82. The
fact that banks have improved 12% in five years to be on a par with the
Amazon’s, iTunes and eBay’s of this world is definitely saying
something.  You can download the full report here.

You do wonder about the extremes here though.  After all, you can
have highly satisfied customers online, but what about all the other
surveys that come out every day saying that people are fearful of
online finance, such as this one saying that 1 in 5 Americans have had their account details compromised online.

I guess the balance between online bank lovers and internet financial haters is about 50:50?

Except that the survey from Gemalto is actually a big PR gaff as 1
in 5 Americans compromised would mean 60 million Americans have had
their internet accounts accessed by hackers.  That is far and away more
than the numbers reported anywhere else.

Therefore, Bank Technology News
chased up and discovered the numbers were a bit 'jumbled' ... in other
words, wrong.  The actual number of Americans who have had issues is
about 27 million or 11% ... and their issues have been some form of
loss of personal data, not banking data.

Maybe we do like internet banking after all.