Best performing South African banks in 2017 – a report by Healy Consultants

SINGAPORE - March 28, 2017 - PRLog -- Earlier this month South Africa's market research company, Consulta Research, released the latest South African Customer Satisfaction Index (SAcsi) for the country's local banking industry showing improvement in the overall customer satisfaction with South African banks.

The SAcsi Standard for retail banking presents neutral insights into the South African retail banking industry by combining Perceived Quality Index, Customer Expectation Index and Perceived Value Index to achieve the overall result of 100.

From the recorded average industry score of 76.3 in 2016, the South African banking industry improved slightly by 0.2 to record a score of 76.5 in 2017.

The leading South African banks per the latest index include Capitec, First National Bank (FNB), Nedbank, Absa and Standard Bank respectively.

"In the banking industry, we have empirical evidence that customer experience drives customer satisfaction rather than product innovation. Thanks to the ease of banking and simplicity of services, Capitec and FNB both performed strongly in this area," said Prof Adré Schreuder, the CEO of Consulta Research.

"FNB showed the highest improvement and is now within reach of Capitec, with Nedbank still in the race. The intensity in competing for customers' hearts and minds s fierce since only two banks have managed to improve their scores this year, namely FNB and Nedbank," he added.

According to the index report, customer industry loyalty has decreased in the past three years from 71.3 in 2014/2015 to 68.7 in 2016/2017. Some banks including Capitec and FNB has however enjoyed steady increase in customer loyalty within the same period.

Among the top five South African banks, Standard Bank recorded the least loyal customers, scoring 63.1 in the latest report.

"Low loyalty scores should be an area of great concern, particularly as brands such as FNB and Capitec market themselves on the ease of switching to their banks," concluded Schreuder.

Healy Consultants is a professional corporate services provider headquartered in Singapore since the year 2003. The company helps global entrepreneurs looking to establish their international businesses in different sectors of the economy with, among others, company registration, tax and vat registration, assistance with obtaining business licenses and official business addresses, opening a corporate and merchant bank account and obtaining work or residence visas.