ING tops on home loan customer satisfaction, says Roy Morgan

Australia’s largest banks appear to have successfully navigated their way through the COVID-19 pandemic with a tick of approval from their home loan customers.

That’s the takeaway from Roy Morgan’s latest banking customer satisfaction data released last week, which recorded the attitudes of home loan customers from a number of Australian banks between June and November 2020.

The figures reveal that the majority of banks increased their customer satisfaction levels compared to the same period in 2019, but it was online bank ING that topped the rankings with a rating of 94.4% (up 2.1% points).

According to Roy Morgan CEO, Michele Levine, the results may be a reflection of the popularity of measures taken by many lenders during the pandemic, including repayment holidays for customers whose incomes had been affected.

“The response of Australian banking and financial institutions to the COVID-19 pandemic has been rewarded with customer satisfaction ratings of home loan customers increasing for all ten leading banks compared to a year ago by an average of 4.8% points to 79%,” she said.

“Australia’s banks provided unprecedented support to home loan customers thrust into financial hardship during 2020 with a wide range of support measures. Roy Morgan research into the impact of COVID-19 on finances shows 10% of Australians who have had a negative employment impact from COVID-19 have had their mortgage payments put on hold for a period of time – and this translates into 21% of all Australians with mortgages.”

It’s also possible that many mortgage holders may have been in a positive frame of mind during the period, given that it coincided with significant interest rate reductions which were still following through following the Reserve Bank’s double rate cut in March.

Between June and November 2020 the average owner-occupier variable rate dropped by nine basis points according to Mozo home loan statistics, and fixed rates fell even further (between 9 and 13 basis points depending on the term).

Challenger banks beat out majors on satisfaction

While ING was the clear standout in terms of satisfied home loan customers, Roy Morgan’s figures show that fellow challenger banks ME (89.8%), Bankwest (88.2%) and Bendigo Bank (87.8%) also fared well - all recording higher scores year-on-year.

Meanwhile, Suncorp emerged as the bank with the largest improvement in customer satisfaction after recording an increase of 12.6% points to an overall score of 85.1%.

The popularity of challenger banks is nothing new though. In the 2020 Mozo People’s Choice Awards - which are based on the opinions of Australian banking customers - Bendigo Bank and ING both rated particularly highly and were among just five recipients of an Outstanding Customer Satisfaction Award.

In terms of the major banks, Roy Morgan found that all four managed to increase their customer satisfaction scores over the year, but they still remain at a distance behind their challenger bank counterparts.

Commonwealth Bank was ranked the highest with a rating of 79.5%, followed by NAB (77.8%), ANZ (74.9%) and Westpac (73.2%).

RELATED: Home loan approvals at all-time high, says ABS

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