Banks falling out of favour with Scots

BANKS are losing favour among Scottish customers at a faster rate than elsewhere, according to a survey prior to the annual reporting season.

Accenture, one of Britain’s biggest management consultancies, with many clients among the top players in the financial industry, said its latest poll of current account customers showed Scottish satisfaction with bank service slumped nearly a quarter last year.

Just 44 per cent of those polled in Scotland were satisfied with their bank compared to 57 per cent a year earlier and 60 per cent in Britain as a whole, which was up from 56 per cent in the previous year.

Only 34 per cent of Scots surveyed said they would recommend their current account provider to friends and family in the year ahead. That was down on 39 per cent in 2010, and compared to 47 per cent of customers throughout Britain who say they would recommend their current account provider to others.

David Parker, a partner at Accenture and senior executive for its UK banking practice, said he believed deeper dissatisfaction among Scottish customers was due to media publicity on restructuring and cost-cutting at partly taxpayer owned banks.

State bailouts of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, owner of Bank of Scotland, following the rescue takeover of HBOS in the financial crisis of 2008, has left the taxpayer with stakes in those groups of 82 and 41 per cent respectively.

Parker said: “There is probably a fallout [in Scotland] from the mood music in the media around banks that have had a bailout.

“The overall reason for dissatisfaction is around small mistakes made by banks involving current account customers. I don’t think it implies they are making more mistakes in Scotland than in England.

“It could be that the restructuring going on in the state-owned banks is having a greater impact on customers in Scotland. That may be driving the way Scottish customers feel.”

Accenture, which employs nearly 400 staff in Scotland at bases in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, said that fewer than one in two Scots (43 per cent) surveyed believe that their bank provides value for money, compared to 59 per cent in 2010.

On the plus side, the survey said 12 per cent of respondents had complained to their bank in the past year, against 17 per cent in 2010.

Scots are buying additional products or services from their existing bank, with 58 per cent saying they are likely to do so in the coming year, up 5 per cent on last year.

Parker said it would be a “big positive” for the Scottish financial industry when partly taxpayer owned banks were returned to the private sector, but doubted that the full glow of its earlier reputation could be restored.

He said this was because there was significant retrenchment on the foreign front. RBS was divesting billions of pounds of foreign operations, and new Lloyds boss Antonio Horta‑Osorio has said the bank will cut roughly half its overseas operations.

“A lot of the kudos that was associated with the industry in Scotland was the international dimension of it, it was not just about the Scottish market,” Parker said. “So that side of the reputation is unlikely to come fully back.”