70% of customers in the UAE have trust in their banks

Nearly 70 per cent of customers in the UAE have a high level of trust in their banks, especially compared to customers in other international banking markets, and that UAE banking customers are five times more likely to say their view of banks has improved rather than worsened in the past six months, said a new survey.

Conducted by the UAE Banks Federation in cooperation with Brunswick Insight and Ipsos Observer, the survey tracks the level of trust among the country's banking customers.

The study is based on responses from 1,040 adults with bank accounts who are resident in the UAE. The survey was conducted in August and the sample of respondents reflected a representative cultural and gender mix. The interviews were conducted using a variety of channels to ensure an optimum level of representativeness.

The survey found that while banks can do more to understand customers' needs, to offer them products that they want, and to offer more reasonable fees and charges, only a quarter (23 per cent) of expatriates believe banks at home are better than those in the UAE.

"As the organisation which advocates best practice for banks in the UAE, the Federation has a duty to gauge whether the efforts that banks make to meet their customers' needs are effective and being felt by their customers,", said AbdulAziz Al Ghurair, Chairman of the UAE Banks Federation .

"More importantly, we want to know where the banks need to up their game, from the point of view of their customers. This project forms the beginning of a process whereby we will be able to better understand whether we are improving our service performance or not, and how we can pinpoint the actions that need to be taken," he added.

"While we are delighted to see that these results bear out our own expectations, we accept that there is still room for improvement, not least in terms of giving customers what they really want, and in delivering it in a way that provides them with the best value", he said.

 

Behave responsibly

Most of the UAE banking customers questioned have confidence in banks to behave responsibly (74 per cent) and trust banks to do what is right (70 per cent).

In terms of top of mind responses about their banks, customers placed good customer service, loans and safety and security significantly ahead of excessive interest rates, high profits and poor customer service.

Customers are five times more likely to say their view of banks has improved (41 per cent) than worsened (8 per cent). They are also more likely to say that banks in their home country are worse (38 per cent) rather than better (23 per cent) than banks in the UAE.

Arab expats (56 per cent) are especially likely to say banks in their home country are worse.

Majorities of consumers feel that banks are dealing well with a variety of issues facing the sector, especially keeping up with digital innovations (78 per cent), responding to new regulations (71 per cent) and preventing cybercrime (71 per cent).

An International trust barometer carried out by an independent agency (Edelman), states that the UAE comes 4th with a rating of 81 per cent, after Indonesia, China and India.

This barometer has an average median of 53 per cent, and countries such as the US (51 per cent), UK (32 per cent) and Australia (51 per cent) fail to meet the average ranking.

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