A Closer Look at NPS® Benchmarks from the Financial Services Sector

SPLICE Software on February 10, 2016

According to McKinsey & Company, the future belongs to institutions that listen to the voice of their clients, and work to improve business practices based on feedback. Yet, there is often difficulty for banking customers to understand their terms and services - resulting in discomfort and complaints about inadequate advice, high interest rates, and hidden costs. These issues can be attributed to the fact that most banks haven’t created a relationship with their clients, and don’t have a full understanding of their banking needs.

Satmetrix®, a global solution provider for managing and improving customer experience, recently released a blog discussing Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) & trends within the Financial Services industry. The blog elaborated on the Satmetrix® US Consumer Net Promoter® study, which covers over 220 different brands in 22 different sectors, collecting more than a million data points from over 30,000 individual US consumers. A few high-level, consistent results are depicted in the Financial Services Trend Chart below:

NPS FIN

Periods of general decline are highlighted in red; periods of general recovery in green.

Source: http://blog.satmetrix.com/2015-nps-benchmarks-what-they-reveal-for-finance-retail

In addition to these metrics, the Satmetrix® blog takes a look at the trends within the Financial Services sector, and sheds some light on growth opportunities from both sides of the NPS® benchmark. Here are examples of institutions who have risen above, and those who have fallen in the last year:

Fallen: Within the Brokerage & Investments sector, Fidelity fell 15pts since 2014. The decrease in score is due to the drop in satisfaction surrounding fund performance and confidence in the firm’s fund risk assessments.

Continued growth: Although American Express continues to hold the leading NPS® score (52) in the Credit Card sector, customers were less satisfied with how widely the card is accepted.

We are able to see that irrespective of how high or low an organization's Net Promoter Score® is, there is always room for growth as survey respondents provide commentary to support their score & help identify areas of improvement.

According to Net Promoter® methodology, feedback from clients - positive or negative - is a gift. As demonstrated in the charts above, client insights can be used to create better business practices, and address systematic issues to help improve products, policies, services & processes so every client gets a better banking experience.

My advice to you, as a Net Promoter® Certified Strategist, is to survey your clients on an ongoing basis & implement client insights. This will have a large, positive impact on your customer loyalty. When an organization takes on a customer facing approach, growth potential is limitless.

For more insights on NPS® - best practices, research, and channel recommendations - tune into our upcoming NPS webinar! Stay tuned @SPLICESoftware for details.