Have you ever had the experience of not being able to access your funds? Perhaps your account was put on hold due to fraud concerns or you were unclear as to funds availability policies or you faced actual bank errors.
The widespread fear and panic of not being able to access funds — or not knowing whether you can — is now rampant following recent bank collapses.
Every customer wants to know their money is safe. Every customer wants to know that if things go wrong, their banks will prioritize their issue, take accountability, and resolve it quickly and with empathy. Yet, when these situations arise, customers panic, and their fears and frustration are heightened, as happened earlier this year when Bank of America customers reported money missing from their accounts.
Using the PositivityTech® intelligent platform’s proprietary tools, complaints submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) about issues related to accessing funds were explored. Get to know which:
- issues are most frustrating to our customers
- institutions have the most complaints as well as rising numbers of complaints about these issues
- institutions take action in response to these issues
Inside customer narratives about issues related to accessing funds
In the following examples, customers describe experiences when they did not have access to their funds, highlighting their perception of the lack of priority, speed, and empathy they faced.
Inside the most severe complaints related to accessing funds
Using customer narrative data, PositivityTech identifies “high-risk customer interactions” and predicts problematic conditions, making it possible for financial institutions to take action.
PositivityTech’s Severity Score, a domain-specific lexicon, identifies severe complaints and future risk based on customer narratives. As you can see in the chart below, more than a third of complaints about inability to access funds have the highest Severity Score ranges.
Inside the banks with complaints related to accessing funds
The five banks with the most complaints about the two most severe issues, “transaction not authorized” and “problem using a debit or ATM card” are Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Chime Financial, and Navy Federal Credit Union.
PositivityTech’s trigger algorithms identify Chime Financial and Navy Federal Credit Union as two institutions with small volume, yet significantly rising numbers of complaints in these problematic areas.
Inside companies’ responses to customers
The CFPB categorizes how companies respond to customers predominantly in three ways: closed with explanation, closed with monetary relief, and closed with non-monetary relief.
Relief, either monetary or non-monetary, demonstrates that companies have taken an action in response to their customer complaints.
In the past 12 months, 18% of complaints about issues related to accessing funds were closed with either monetary relief or non-monetary relief. Seventy-four percent of complaints related to accessing funds were closed with explanation, which reveals that more work still needs to be done.
The 5 banks with the most complaints related to accessing funds widely differ in their response to their customers. As you can see, Bank of America responds with the most monetary relief.
How banks can instill confidence in their customers
Amid customers’ fear and panic, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) states, “All firms must be able to show consistently that fair treatment of customers is at the heart of their business model.” That includes protecting vulnerable populations, and, according to the FCA, “all customers are at risk of becoming vulnerable.” Likewise, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) discusses elevating fairness in banking, encouraging banks to make pro-customer reforms.
By using customer narratives as a source of intelligence, you can reveal early indicators of banks’ most severe issues and the effectiveness of their responses, and take preemptive actions to mitigate risk and ensure stronger, more trustworthy institutions.
Interested in uncovering your bank’s blind spots? Connect with me at marcia.tal@positivitytech.com. I look forward to helping you transform negatives into positives.
