Banking9.11.2020

New BrandsEye index reveals the best and worst banks in South Africa

BrandsEye has released its annual South African Banking Sentiment Index which ranks African Bank as the top institution while Discovery Bank finished last.

This index is based on 585,645 social media posts from consumers which were collected from September 2019 to August 2020.

These posts were analysed for sentiment and conversation themes, including the treating customer fairly (TCF) outcomes prescribed by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).

Each post received a sentiment rating – positive, neural, or negative – which was used to calculate a net sentiment ranking for each bank.

The results showed that African Bank was the only institution with a net positive sentiment of 2.6%.

Capitec Bank ranked second with a net negative sentiment of -4.6%, followed by TymeBank (-7.2%) and Standard Bank (-11.2%).

On the other end of the scale Discovery Bank ranked last with a net negative sentiment of -22.3%.

Discovery Bank also had the lowest response rate and the highest proportion of customers threatening to quit on social media.

Nedbank suffered a 33-point net sentiment decline over the last year, which BrandsEye attributed to its Global Citizen movement partnership which ended last year.

It was also affected by reputational sentiment decline stemming from allegations of racism in its pricing of home loans for black customers.

BrandsEye CEO Nic Ray said the banks faced an immense challenge in meeting the growing social customer service demands of consumers in 2020.

“COVID-19 has accelerated this preference for digital interactions and banks will now need to ensure that they are equipped to rapidly identify and respond to these queries,” said Ray.

“Our findings show that banks who are not able to meet service expectations yield high rates of cancellation threats.”

The charts below provide an overview of the findings in the latest BrandsEye South African banking sentiment index.