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Santander won the accolade of "best savings account" when compared with nine other UK banks, per an audit from Worship cited by Finextra.
The banks were scored on several factors, including: new customer eligibility criteria and how easy those criteria are to find, the account-opening experience, and mobile site speed. Santander led the ranking with a score of 59.5 out of 70, narrowly edging out Metro Bank at 58.7 and Halifax at 54.9.
Digital account opening - a key focus of this study - was the source of multiple customer pain points.
- The bottom five banks all failed to allow non-current account customers to open a savings account online. HSBC, RBS, NatWest, Barclays, and TSB - which all scored below 30 on Worship's audit - do not allow consumers who aren't current account holders to open a savings account online; and HSBC explicitly asks new customers to go to a branch to open a savings account. By not enabling new account onboarding through digital channels, these banks - along with others that don't provide digital account opening to new users - are likely driving up customer attrition rates.
- The bank in last place had the most difficult-to-find new customer account eligibility information. Users who tried to find eligibility information about TSB - which scored a 22.4, the lowest of the 10 banks inspected - through its website found that it took 4 minutes and 5 seconds on average. This was an overwhelming five times longer than the time it took via RBS's site, where users were able to find eligibility information in only 46 seconds. This is an error with serious potential consequences: If banks can't offer digital account opening, they should at least make eligibility information readily available to customers so they can know what options are available to them before going to the branch.
- Even Santander, the No. 1 bank, frustrated customers by asking them to reenter information. It only took users an average of 3 minutes and 24 seconds to open a savings account with Santander - the shortest process of the 10 banks. And while it was the leader in Worship's ranking, users expressed frustration about being asked to reenter information, a problem that was not unique to Santander. As such, banks should try to strip their digital account-opening processes of as much repetition as possible to avoid causing prospective customers to abandon their onboarding out of frustration.
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