PROVIDENCE – Bank of America ranked fourth among the six national retail banks in the United States for customer satisfaction, consumer ratings firm J.D. Power announced recently.
Based in Charlotte, N.C., Bank of America is the only bank of the six with a presence in Rhode Island, where it is the second-largest bank based on in-state deposits.
Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank’s score of 855 out of a possible 1,000 edged out New York-based JPMorgan Chase’s 854 to rank highest in the ratings, followed by Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank with 842, Bank of America with 830, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo with 822 and New York-based Citibank with 818.
The six banks account for 45 percent of total in-market deposits in the U.S., according to J.D. Power.
The firm’s inaugural study of the six national banks was designed to provide a comprehensive view of customer experience with all bank product lines. It evaluated the customer experience across six factors: channel interactions, deposit accounts, credit accounts, investment accounts, convenience, and problem resolution.
“The largest retail banks in the nation are playing a different game than smaller, regionally focused rivals, so they should be evaluated on their own scale,” Bob Neuhaus, J.D. Power’s financial-services consultant, said in a statement.
“These banks offer a full line of products, including deposits, credit and investments, and to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction in every market, they must deliver consistently on all of these,” he said.
Key findings of the study:
- Banks cannot afford to make mistakes: The common denominator among the top-performing national banks is a lower number of reported problems, which can be incorrect fees and service charges, processing and transaction errors, unauthorized activity, and poor customer service.
- Consistency is critical to multiproduct strategy: Top-performing national banks provide consistent performance across all product lines as overall customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention increase as the number of individual banking products used increases.
- Millennial money in motion: Younger customers – the millennial generation [those born from 1982 to 1994] and the Gen Z generation [those born from 1995 to 2004] – are the most likely to have multiproduct relationships with their banks.
- Tailored financial advice and proactive contact drive trust: Among customers who indicated their bank provides financial advice that they trust, 86 percent said they received proactive contact from the bank tailored to their specific needs.
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@PBN.com.
