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Consumer faith in UK banking industry continues to fall

14th December 2012 Print
Money

Scandals involving the UK Banking industry have caused consumer faith to plummet – that’s according to the latest report which has revealed nose-diving levels of trust towards UK banks.

Gfk NOP researched seven core service factors across around 2000 UK consumers in early May and again in July. The results show that the number of people who say they no longer trust their bank has risen to more than a third, with just a quarter of people believing that their bank has their best interests at heart.

People are now starting to look for alternatives” said Stephen Mitcham, Chief Executive of The Cambridge Building Society. “There’s been this gradual drip-drip of negative stories that have the banks involved. We’ve seen PPI issues, the swap issues and the Libor scandal and people are saying ‘there has to be something different”.

Allegations of lax controls regarding money laundering and problems preventing people accessing their money were also cited as being to blame for these changing attitudes.

During a troublesome three month period from May to July this year, banks were beaten in 11 different areas of customer satisfaction by alternatives – in everything from being valued as a customer, to honesty and complaint handling.

The report has found that building societies and other mutuals now outscore banks across all of these customer service factors by a greater margin than in May.

“I think gradually, over time, people are saying there has to be something different. Too often the Banks treat people like a number and I think overwhelmingly people want to be treated as an individual. That’s something we try really hard with at The Cambridge Building Society to actually reflect back to people” concludes Mitcham.

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Money