Fairbanking ratings: Is UK retail banking showing signs of reform?
In 2010, the Fairbanking Foundation, published a report entitled “Fairbanking Ratings: socially useful banking”. For the first time, this report demonstrated that product features which help customer financial well-being can be identified and measured through a rating system based on financial well-being criteria. Fairbanking Ratings measure the extent to which a product contains features that, when used by the customer, are likely to improve his or her level of financial satisfaction.
Regular savings products, current accounts and credit cards were rated in the last report based on publicly available information. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (Nesta), this new report - ‘Fairbanking ratings: Is UK retail banking showing signs of reform - is based on a survey sent to more than 40 banking institutions in the UK, with a response from 27 institutions, 60% of the sample. Respondents included four of the top six UK banking organisations (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, and RBS/NatWest) meaning that a very significant percentage of the UK market for these products is covered.
This report has been expanded to include non-debt current accounts and to comment on credit union products.
We have had an outstanding response given this is the first survey of its kind. The reaction from a very high proportion of banking institutions has been positive and encouraging, even from those with a relatively low rating. Many have seen the potential benefits for the industry of the approach taken.
There have been a considerable number of product improvements in the last year, when compared with Fairbanking’s previous report. The Saffron Building Society offers better feedback on reaching a savings goal, Barclaycard has added alerts and other improvements, Lloyds Bank now offers its money manager service on current accounts and Thinkbanking has added a sophisticated payment forecasting feature to its non-debt current account. These four products gained the highest ratings of any products in the report.
A free PDF download of the new report is available here (please note that given the file size, this takes a few seconds).
Research survey questionnaires:
Credit Cards | Current Accounts | Non-Debt Current Accounts | Regular Savings Accounts
