Leading offshore banks failing investors online

Three million Britons invest their money offshore but new research has found that providers could be missing out on new business.  Many fail to give visitors to their websites even a basic quality of customer experience. There’s a lack of information consumers want and most websites make it difficult for customers to get in touch. 

Global Reviews, the customer experience benchmarking firm, assessed twelve of the leading offshore bank account websites against 176 different criteria including; how easy the site is to find on Google  the quantity and quality of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ (FAQs), contact information and access channels such as enquiry forms and, call back services and online chat.

HSBC led the‘Offshore Online’ benchmark with 58%, followed by Halifax (49%), Abbey (46%), Lloyds TSB (40%), Bradford and Bingley (37%), Britannia (34%), Royal Bank (33%), Barclays (31%), Anglo (29%), Citi (26%), Alliance (24%) and Citigold (18%).  The industry average is a disappointing 28%.  By contrast, the average score for the Savings Account Benchmark which also covered a dozen companies was 48%.

The study also found that;

• Halifax offers the best experience for new customers
• Lloyds product and technical FAQs scored 100%
• Most companies make contact information difficult to find from the homepage with an industry average of only 25%
• Only five of the twelve offer FAQs on offshore banking
• Nine of the twelve providers fail to offer an online enquiry form
• Only four out of twelve offer the option to request a call back
• Only HSBC offers the ability to chat online

Global Reviews Director, Adam Goodvach said:

“When it comes to offshore it’s not as simple as popping into your local branch.  Unfortunately consumers’ online experience varies dramatically depending on the website they are visiting.  It is crucial that providers’ improve the content on their websites and make it easier for customers to find the information they are looking for online. Given that most customers are high income earners, the paltry efforts of some companies came as quite a surprise.”

The benchmark was conducted in May 2007.

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For media inquiries please contact;

Catherine Swift
PR Contact – Global Reviews
07801 817 451
cath.swift@globalreviews.co.uk

Adam Goodvach
Global Reviews Director, UK
020 7681 4065

Notes to Editors