Informa Research Services 2006 Survey Shows Washington Mutual, SunTrust and Wachovia Notable Exceptions for Building High Levels of Customer Satisfaction

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (November 15, 2006) –

With several notable exceptions, the 20 largest banks in the United States continue to be outpaced by credit unions and community banks in ratings for customer satisfaction and loyalty according to a new Survey on branch customer service.

The second annual Informa Research Services’ Branch Customer Satisfaction Survey reveals that retail customers of the Top-20 institutions, each with $50 billion and more in deposits, give these largest banks the lowest ratings for satisfaction and loyalty. Credit unions and community banks received the highest customer ratings for both satisfaction and loyalty.

“Yet a few of the large banks are clearly leading the way in providing exemplary branch customer service,” said Paul Lubin, senior vice president of Informa Research Services, who supervised the Survey. “These notable exceptions among the largest banks are Washington Mutual, SunTrust and Wachovia which outrank all except for community banks and credit unions,” said Lubin. The Informa Research Services Survey also found that Citizens and Bank of America are also among the “Top-20 institutions that do well in garnering customer commitment.”

The 2006 Survey shows that in “aggregate, credit unions out-perform all, including community banks, in terms of generating high ‘satisfaction’ and ‘likelihood to stay.'"

Community bank customers cluster near the top for high levels of satisfaction and likelihood to stay, said Lubin, adding that “while community banks achieve the same satisfaction numbers as credit unions, fewer of their customers rated them highest for ‘likelihood to stay.’”

Customers of mid-sized regional institutions indicated a “distinct drop both in satisfaction and likelihood to stay,” compared with the 2005 Informa Research Services Survey.

“The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is simply that mid-sized institutions do not offer the superior service one might expect from a community institution, thus carrying the same stigma as the top-20 institutions, and they are too small to truly compete head-to-head with an institution of nationwide or wide regional presence,” said Lubin.

He stresssed that “banks must recognize the ‘primacy of the branch.’ The branch experience carries great weight with the customer, dictating loyalty, and with it, customer satisfaction and advocacy, retention, services used and, ultimately, revenue.”

The Survey points out that “branch traffic is still as heavy as it was a decade ago, despite increased use of the online channel. The Internet is merely another line of communication between customer and provider, just as are the telephone, the VRU and the branch.”

Analysis of the 2006 Survey findings showed that in terms of satisfaction, consumers generally viewed the industry about the same in 2006 as in 2005.

“About seven out of ten are highly satisfied, and about one out of twenty are overall dissatisfied with their primary financial institution. As a whole, the industry has not improved despite all of the demonstrated importance of customer loyalty and customer in-branch experience,” Lubin said.

The Survey also revealed that 25% of customers are unlikely or neutral toward recommending their bank to others. When asked about ‘advocacy,’ only 51% of customers said they are highly likely to recommend their bank, up slightly from 48% in 2005.

Credit unions and community banks draw the highest advocacy ratings. Top-20 banks performed the worst for customer advocacy, and it was the only class of institutions to draw below average ratings in both customer satisfaction and advocacy in the Informa Research Services Survey.

“Here again, we see splendid exceptions of SunTrust, Wachovia and WAMU, being among the top performers. There were wide differences across banks in terms of success in garnering customer advocacy and loyalty,” Lubin said.

“In looking at the components that comprise loyalty, customer advocacy of your brand is the most difficult metric to attain, and there’s quite a bit of room for improvement,” said Lubin.

The 2006 Informa Research Services Branch Customer Service Survey draws insights and conclusions based on input from 2,863 consumers nationwide that are representative of US households, a much larger sampling than the first Branch Customer Service Survey last year, which reported on input from 1,690 consumers nationwide. The 2006 Survey allows projections on total sample statistics with a 95% confidence level that the true proportion falls within +/-1.8% of the sample proportion.

For more information about the Informa Research Services 2006 Branch Customer Satisfaction Survey or to purchase the Survey, call LeRoy Abrams at (800)532-8586 Ext. 438.

About Informa Research Services, Inc. (www.informars.com)

Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Calabasas, California, Informa Research Services, Inc, provides the financial industry's most extensive array of market research and decision-support information.

Conducting daily surveys of the retail, lending, and business products offered by more than 10,000 financial organizations nationwide, Informa currently supports the product pricing decisions of more than 3,000 clients, representing all 50 states, and including all of the top 25 financial institutions. Informa conducts the finest mystery shopping and market research studies available, delivering accurate and relevant measurements in the areas of employee sales and service, customer satisfaction, closed account research and retention, competitive performance, fair treatment, and compliance testing.

The company’s extensive financial product database is a popular source of licensed editorial content for financial portals, websites, newspapers, and magazines, attracting major Internet partners, including MSN, Yahoo! Finance, The Real Estate Journal, The Motley Fool, Quicken, ABC, MyFico.com, Equifax, and Edmunds.com.