VERNON CUSTOMERS PUT TRUST IN THEIR SOCIETY

Across the UK, local building socities’ customers trust their society more than they trust their banks. That is the finding of recent research carried out by YouGov where 44% of bank customers believed their bank acts in their best interests in comparison with 63% of building society customers.

When local building society the Vernon asked its own customers the same question, the results were significantly higher with 76% of their customers believing that the Society always acts in their best interests and 91% of respondents stating that they trust the Vernon as a provider of financial services.

Left: Comparison graph – Vernon Building Society and high street banks

Customer service at the Vernon also scored extremely highly, with 90% of customers finding staff friendly and welcoming, 88% finding staff helpful, professional and efficient and 88% of customers rating the overall service they receive from Vernon Building Society as excellent.  81% of customers would also recommend the Society to friends or family as opposed to just 60% of bank customers.

Chief Executive of the Vernon, Mike Hanson said: 

“At a time when confidence in financial institutions is particularly low it’s important that we work hard to earn our customers’ trust and to demonstrate how we behave differently to the banks.  As a building society we’re owned by our members and put their interests first whereas the banks’ primary aim is to generate profit at the expense of their customers.  Whilst we’re very pleased with the results of our survey we’re not complacent and will continue our hard work to improve further.”