Customer satisfaction with online-only direct banks trended lower during the past year even as a surge of new customers opened checking and savings accounts, according to the J.D. Power 2024 U.S. direct banking satisfaction study, released this week.
"Despite significant increases in deposit interest rates for both checking and savings accounts — but decreases in the proportion of customers who had to pay a fee or experienced a problem — overall satisfaction still declined," Paul McAdam, senior director of banking and payments intelligence at J.D. Power, said in a statement.
"That's because customers who experienced problems had a very tough time resolving them in a timely manner, causing satisfaction with the ease of problem resolution to decline sharply."
J.D. Power's annual study measures overall satisfaction with direct bank and neobank checking and/or savings/money market products based on these dimensions:
- Customer service
- Ease of moving money
- Helps grow money
- Level of trust
- Managing account via mobile app
- Managing account via website
- Reduce banking fees
The new study, fielded from December through March, is based on responses from 8,648 direct bank customers.
Delayed Responses
The study found year-over-year declines in satisfaction with direct banking, though satisfaction was still higher than with traditional banks.
The overall customer satisfaction score for direct bank checking accounts was 688 (on a 1,000-point scale), down 27 points from 2023. Overall satisfaction for direct bank savings accounts was 710, down 8 points from last year.
The 2024 study heard fewer customer complaints, but the problems customers did experience were more complicated and took longer to resolve. As a result, satisfaction with the problem resolution process fell 67 points. The total amount of time required to resolve a problem grew to 2.6 days, up from 1.9 days in 2023.
