Online Banking Awards Revealed for 2018

Canstar has revealed the 2018 Online Bank of the Year Award winners after rating 77 providers from across Australia.

After rating online and mobile banking functionality offered by bank and customer-owned institutions, Canstar has announced the winners of the 2018 Bank of the Year and Customer-Owned Bank of the Year awards for Online Banking and Mobile Banking. Canstar’s Online and Mobile Banking Awards recognise institutions that offer quality online and mobile banking services to further enhance customer experience.

Canstar Research considers banks for the Bank of the Year as well as customer-owned institutions including mutual banks, credit unions and building societies for the Customer-Owned Bank of the Year. The award recipients are institutions that receive the highest score across a range of criteria encompassing functionality and customer satisfaction.

In deciding the winners, the following factors were considered:

• Payments and transactions:
  • Domestic
  • International
  • Bill payments
  • Contactless
• Research and applications:
  • Calculators
  • Product information
  • Application (including process and ID verification)
  • Education tools
• Security
  • Secondary authentication
  • Automatic log-off/lock out
  • Strange transaction protocol
• Banking assistant:
  • Account status and information
  • Budgeting tools
  • Alerts
  • Compatibility
  • Account maintenance
  • Other services (such as ability to access account information across other products)
  • Product specific (such as home loans and credit cards)
• Support:
  • Community
  • Customer support
  • Location services

The Bank of the Year – Online Banking and Mobile Banking Award also considers customer satisfaction results collected as part of Canstar Blue’s Most Satisfied Customer Award – Banks. Canstar Blue is Canstar’s sister company dedicated to providing customer reviews collected from Australians and professional market research groups to help consumers compare brands of their choice.

For more information about the specifics of the methodology and how ratings were determined, view the ratings methodology.

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Bank of the Year – Online Banking & Mobile Banking: Commonwealth Bank

Following Canstar Research’s rigorous ratings process, Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has been awarded Bank of the Year – Online Banking nine years in a row and Bank of the Year – Mobile Banking three years in a row. Canstar Research noted CBA outperformed all other institutions by offering above and beyond the day-to-day requirements of a banking platform. This included features such as the Spend Tracker, which automatically categorised every debit and credit card transaction to make it easier for customers to track their spending. There were also support features such as direct links to support for individual products, phone service wait times for specific queries, or prompts to FAQs and community support.

On top of this, CBA offered a comprehensive list of functionalities to enable customers to:

• access cardless cash and contactless payments
• place a temporary lock on cards
• increase/decrease credit card limits (within an approved range)
• utilise calculators and tools
• personalise accounts
• single swipe to access their balance, Camera Pay and ATM locator.

The table below displays Commonwealth Bank’s transaction account on Canstar’s database. To compare transaction accounts with other providers, view our comparison table here. 

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Customer Owned Bank of the Year – Online Banking & Mobile Banking: Beyond Bank

Canstar Research identified Beyond Bank as providing leading online and mobile banking for customers, naming the institution as the winner of Customer Owned Bank of the Year – Online Banking four years in a row, and Customer Owned Bank of the Year – Mobile Banking three years in a row. Beyond Bank performed well across all functionality categories of the research partly due to features being available both on desktop and mobile applications. Beyond Bank was among the first of the institutions to uptake the New Payments Platform introduced earlier this year. It is particularly ahead in the banking assistant component of the award, with a range of budgeting tools and functions on offer to help customers view, customise and access accounts.

The table below displays a snapshot of Beyond Bank’s transaction accounts on Canstar’s database, sorted by Star Rating. To compare transaction accounts with other providers, view our comparison table here. 

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