First Direct top for happy current account customers again as RBS comes bottom

Updated

First Direct, Nationwide Building Society and the Co-op have topped a current account service satisfaction survey, while RBS has taken bottom place.

The MoneySavingExpert.com survey put First Direct in first place again - with 90% of customers describing its service as "great".

First Direct, which offers current account customers £100 to switch to it, has been unbeaten since MoneySavingExpert started the twice-yearly survey in 2010.

Just over a third (37%) of customers put the service from RBS as "great", keeping it in 11th place on the table.

Major banks Barclays, HSBC and RBS's sister bank NatWest were also towards the bottom in the survey of more than 6,000 people.

Guy Anker, managing editor of MoneySavingExpert.com, says: "Customer service is key when it comes to bank accounts - for most, it's the part of their finances they use the most and if something goes wrong, it has the biggest impact.

"The results of our poll show the old-school banks are still stuck at the bottom of the table, and if they don't up their game, they'll lose even more customers to the challenger banks who are consistently at the top.

"Switching has never been easier, so there's no excuse to stay with a bank you aren't happy with. Under the Current Account Switch Service it takes seven working days and all payments into and out of the old account will be switched automatically too.

"Better still, some of the accounts that pay you the most to switch have good customer service scores too."

Providers with fewer than 100 votes were excluded from the survey.

Here are how banks and building societies were ranked in the latest survey in August, according to MoneySavingExpert.com.

The results from an earlier survey in February are in brackets. The percentages show the people who ranked the service as great, followed by OK, followed by poor:

1. (1) First Direct 90% (90%); 7% (7%); 3% (3%)

2. (2) Nationwide Building Society 74% (80%); 20% (17%); 6% (3%)

3. (3) Co-op and its brand Smile 68% (70%); 24% (20%); 8% (10%)

4. (5) Santander 63% (62%); 30% (31%); 7% (7%)

5. (4) TSB 64% (63%); 27% (29%); 9% (8%)

6. (=7) Halifax 50% (50%); 39% (38%); 11% (12%)

7. (=7) Lloyds 50% (50%); 37% (38%); 13% (12%)

8. (9) NatWest 47% (48%); 39% (38%); 14% (14%)

9. (12) HSBC 46% (43%); 37% (36%); 17% (21%)

10. (13) Barclays 43% (41%); 42% (40%); 15% (19%)

11. (11) Royal Bank of Scotland 37% (44%); 42% (39%); 21% (17%)

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