By dint of rotations in the agencies, you are more than two out of three to know the name of your bank adviser, according to our study. However, proximity to this pillar of your financial life remains an important criterion of satisfaction.
On the one hand, increasingly digitized traditional banks which, over the years, have greatly improved their websites and their mobile application; on the other, online banks which now have, for the oldest at least, catalogs of products that no longer have much to envy to their elders. Between these two ways of consuming the bank, the experience of customers has become singularly similar in recent years. However, there is a major difference: the agencyand therefore the possibility of meeting, one-on-one, an advisor.
According to a recent survey published by the French Banking Federation (1), 81% of customers continue to prefer banking with branches, compared to only 13% for exclusively online brands. Being able to physically meet an adviser still justifies, for a large majority of users, pay more for their bank consumption. Much more expensive even: for the same basket of standard products and services, Fortuneo and Boursorama Banque, the two headliners of online banking, charge you 2.80 euros per year. The cheapest traditional bank, Crédit Coopératif, sells the same products for 109 euros. And the bill can go much higher, up to 261.90 euros in the two most expensive establishments in France, the Dupuy de Parseval and Marze banks.
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1 in 3 clients do not know the name of their adviser
However, the relationship between clients and their adviser is more and more distended. Another poll (2), commissioned by MoneyVox as part of its 2023 Banking Quality Awards, shows this. People who go at least once a month in their bank branch are increasingly rare : 19% on average, all institutions combined. A figure that can drop even lower in some brands. Only 11% of Société Générale customers, for example, say they go to a branch at least once a month.
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Another sign of a certain distance between user and agency: a third of those questioned declare not knowing the name of their adviser. A relatively high figure, which can be explained in particular by the permanent turnover in the branches: only one customer in four (24%), on average, claims to have kept the same adviser for the last five years. 30% had two and 26% more than two.
Proximity to the advisor, an important satisfaction criterion
The reasons for these rotations are known. Some are suffered by the banks, in particular the resignations of their advisers; others are linked to their political choices, in terms of commercial objectives or career development.
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One thing seems certain: the brands that manage (or choose) to slow down these rotations get some benefits in terms of image. This is the case of Crédit Mutuel and CIC. The two big winners of the 2023 Banking Quality Trophies are among the three banks, with La Banque Postale (30%), where the share of customers who have only known one advisor in the last 5 years is the largest: 31 % at Crédit Mutuel and 29% at CIC. These are also the two banks in which the proportion of customers declaring that they know the name of their adviser is the highest: 82% at Crédit Mutuel and 80% at CIC. Very far ahead of BNP Paribas (57%), La Banque Postale (59%) or Société Générale (60%).
(1) Survey conducted by Ifop with a sample of 4,000 people, representative of the French population aged 18 and over. Fieldwork from December 1 to 13, 2021. (2) OpinionWay survey for MoneyVox conducted from September 26 to October 19 with a sample of 5,013 banked French people recruited from a representative sample of the adult French population.