Sign in
The industry-wide sentiment score on banking in Saudi edged up to 0.1% in 2024, compared to last year’s -0.8%, according to PwC’s KSA Banking Sentiment Index (pdf). Performance metrics vary by as much as 47.1 percentage points across Saudi lenders, “demonstrating the large spread of performance across the industry,” the report says.
The methodology: The index analyzed some 62.3k online comments about the top nine Saudi banks — Al Bilad Bank, Al Rajhi Bank, Alinma Bank, Banque Saudi Fransi,
Riyad Bank, STC Pay, Saudi Awwal Bank, Saudi Investment Bank, Saudi National Bank — gathered between May and December 2023.
Al Rajhi and Alinma led the online conversation on banking this year, respectively capturing 40% and 24% of total share of voice. Persistent complaints about slow service, high product rates and digital mishaps were found to be the primary drivers of public opinion, according to the report.
More consumers are turning to digital channels: Digital channels made up 67% of online conversations, up 6.5 percentage points from last year, with a net sentiment score of -64.8%. Mobile apps — despite still having a negative sentiment score — were crowned best-performing service channel, with a net sentiment of -63.6%, as complaints mainly revolved around technical glitches, downtime and transaction delays. Meanwhile, traditional channels lagged even further behind with sentiment scores as low as -83.1%.
Overall, customer service was short of a crowd-pleaser: Turnaround time accounted for 84.3% of all customer complaints. Customers cited long delays in response to inquiries and applications across account services, loans and card requests as the main sources of dissatisfaction.
Downtime topped the list of risks: Operational deficiencies, particularly downtime, were the largest risk factor across the sector. Some 44.7% of downtime-related complaints were linked to payment or transaction process failures, while unspecified mobile app issues accounted for another 21.4%.
