Forcing banks to tell customers their ranks

On Wednesday, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority published the first survey of whether retail or small business customers would recommend their bank to family and friends. The information must be published by the bank in their branches, website and apps, and is pretty embarrassing for some and good for others.

For example, Metro Bank comes out well in both categories, coming second behind First Direct for retail and Handelsbanken for small business customers. But Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) comes bottom in both classes, which is interesting considering that RBS subsidiary NatWest ranks as a middler.

Here are the two key charts:

RETAIL BANKING

SMALL BUSINESS BANKING

The research is put together by independent firms GfK UK Limited for retail and BDRC for small business customers, and results will be updated every six months (February and August). The research also ranks each banks’ online and mobile services, branch and overdraft services.

It is interesting that the banks are being ranked this way by independent research and then forced to show this to their customers. Even more interestingly, bank services will be ranked in further areas over time. For example, from February 2019, banks have to publish figures on how long it takes to open current accounts and replace debit cards.