[imagesource: Ufuk Zizana]

The pandemic has affected almost every sector of society, most notably the economy.

When we entered into a hard and extended lockdown on March 27 last year, banks in South Africa responded quickly to the financial troubles that a number of their account holders were experiencing.

As of the end of October 2020, The Banking Association of South Africa (BASA) recorded upwards of R50 billion in financial relief to businesses and individuals.

That’s acording to Consulta, which notes that banks were rewarded for their efforts with increased loyalty from their customers.

However, the pressure is now on to maintain this loyalty amidst increased expectations, as the pandemic continues to test customers’ ability to survive economically.

Consulta recently released the results of a survey of roughly 12 500 banking customers at six of the country’s biggest banks – Absa, African Bank, Capitec, FNB, Nedbank, and Standard Bank – in their 2020 South African Customer Satisfaction Index (SA-csi) for Banking.

The SA-csi is a strategic tool for figuring out individual firms’ competitiveness and predicting future profitability by measuring customer satisfaction performance.

Over to Ineke Prinsloo, Head of Customer Insights at Consulta.

“Every aspect of the customer journey has been fundamentally upended, with many self-service channels from Artificial Intelligence (AI), chatbots, apps, and contact centres opening up between banks and their customers.”

“While these were necessary measures to deal with unprecedented times and high levels of service enquiries at the time, they also have significant consequences for customer experience, expectations, and satisfaction, now and into the future.”

The data for 2020 revealed the best and worst banks in South Africa.

Capitec has managed to maintain its position as the top bank in South Africa but is showing signs of slowing down, with Nedbank and African Bank gaining ground.

Nedbank has shown year on year improvements in performance, managing to once again outperform FNB.

This is further demonstrated in a recent Banking Market Share study conducted by Consulta in 2020 which shows that despite the turbulent year, Nedbank has maintained its market share and Capitec grew by 4%.

Absa and Standard Bank have shown some improvement, but have continued to perform below industry standards for the past five years.

The Citizen generated a useful summary of the general findings in the report, with the percentage of satisfied customers determining the rankings.

1. Capitec has the most satisfied customers with 84,7%
2. African Bank comes in second with 83,4%
3. Nedbank gaining ground with 81,1%
4. FNB with 80,2%
5. Absa with 78,6%
6. Coming in last, Standard Bank with 77,7%

For those who prefer graphs:

The primary complaints made by banking customers were about account queries, debit orders, and payments, card issues, fees, and costs.

Overall, banks appeared to be lacking in the ability to prevent repeats of some of the issues that caused complaints.

Capitec had the lowest number of complaints at 11,9% and a high complaint resolution rate of 55,4%.

On the other end of the spectrum, FNB had the highest number of complaints at 23,0% and the lowest complaint resolution rate at 49,8%.

You can read a more detailed breakdown here, or a summary of further findings here.

[source:consulta&citizen]