Best and worst banks: how customers rate their service

A survey has revealed which banks are most likely to be recommended based on their quality of service, online and mobile banking, overdraft and branch services.

This article was originally published in February.

First direct is the bank we're most likely to recommend to friends, while Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) remains the least likely to get a positive review.

That's according to a detailed new survey of customer opinions from Ipsos MORI, which was commissioned by the Competition and Markets Authority to learn more about how well banks are treating us.

Regular loveMONEY readers may not be surprised by first direct taking the top spot as it regularly scores well in various customer satisfaction surveys.

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Worth listening to these results

Across the UK, approximately 865 customers were surveyed for each provider between January and December 2019, with 13,828 people being surveyed in total.

The fact that each bank has a decent number of respondents is significant as many other surveys often have an uneven spread, which can really skew the findings for banks with particularly few respondents.

Customers were asked how likely they were to recommend their current account provider and their online and mobile banking services, as well as overdraft and branch services to family and friends.

The results reveal the proportion of customers, among those who took part in the survey, of each provider who said they were ’extremely likely’ or ‘very likely’ to recommend each service.

Overall service quality

Customers from different banks were asked how likely they would be to recommend their personal current account provider to friends and family.

Out of those surveyed, 83% of first direct customers said they would recommend their provider to family and friends.

Metro Bank was the second most recommended at 82% while Nationwide was third at 74%.

It was bad news for TSB (55%) and Tesco Bank (49%) but this was better than RBS, which scored the lowest out of all the banks surveyed at 46%.

Unfortunately, RBS was also at the bottom of pile at 46% when these results were last released in August.

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Online and mobile banking services

Back to the survey, when customers were asked how likely they would be to recommend their provider’s online and mobile banking services to friends and family, Metro Bank took the top spot at 85%.

It was closely followed by Barclays and first direct, which both scored 83%.

Unfortunately, TSB, Clydesdale Bank and The Co-operative Bank did not fare well, although Tesco Bank was ultimately last at 62%.

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Overdraft services

First Direct was most likely to be recommended for its overdraft services at 74%, closely followed by Metro Bank at 70%.

Both HSBC and Nationwide scored 62%.

At the bottom of the pile was Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale Bank, which both scored 48%.

It should be noted that Tesco Bank was excluded despite offering overdraft services as less than 100 of their customers provided an eligible score.

Services in branches

Customers were asked how likely they would be to recommend their provider’s branch services to friends and family.

Metro Bank took the top spot, scoring 84% while Nationwide scored 80%, followed by Lloyds Bank at 71%.

RBS was at the bottom of the pile at 50%, while NatWest scored 63% and The Co-operative Bank scored 58%.

Tesco Bank and First Direct were obviously excluded as they don’t operate any branches under their branding.