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Loyalty Falls as Financial Customers Threaten to Vote with Their Feet

Customer Retention Drops to New Low as Two-Thirds of Customers Consider Swapping Insurance and Banking Providers This Year

Irvine, CA - June 02, 2008

Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of consumers are actively considering ‘switching’ insurance providers¹ in the next 12 months, with 63 percent saying the same about their banks. This is according to a cross-Atlantic customer loyalty survey from Thunderhead.

The enterprise communications company surveyed 500 consumers across the US and UK about attitudes to their current financial services providers. Consumers were also asked about the quality of communications received from their banks and insurance companies over the last year. Only 26 percent of overall respondents said that they felt their current bank or insurance company sent them ‘personalized’ communications that were immediately ‘relevant’ to their needs.

In fact, only a very small number of the consumers surveyed feel a sense of ‘loyalty’ to their insurance providers and banks (17 percent and 16 percent respectively). The remainder of those surveyed said they were ‘uncertain’ if they would switch providers this year.

The research also shows that the proliferation of mobile phones, BlackBerrys and social networking sites is impacting how customers want to communicate. 50 percent of consumers said that receiving communications in real-time was ‘very important’ to them. A large number, 76 percent, said they would like the option to receive communications via email and 40 percent preferred the option of having relevant, timely information delivered to them via personalized web portals. Additionally, a rapidly emerging segment indicated that they would like to receive messages and notifications via SMS messages and were also interested in having messages and new product offers delivered to popular social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook. Surprisingly, only half of those surveyed wanted to continue to receive communications from their bank or insurance company via the post.

Executive quote

“Maintaining customer loyalty continues to be a key issue for our banking and insurance clients,” said Glen Manchester, CEO of Thunderhead. “Customers have never had higher service expectations and have come to expect today’s providers to communicate with them across the range of devices they use in their daily lives. Our banking and insurance clients are actively seeking new ways to engage with customers to enhance their level of service and build customer loyalty.”

“Gone are the days when financial providers can rely on bank tellers and brokers to build relationships with the customer. Ensuring personal, relevant and timely communications with each individual customer, via a number of different channels, is critical to building and maintaining a strong relationship and retaining customers. As a result, customer engagement and multi-channel communications must be a top business priority for banks and insurance providers,” Manchester concluded.

About the company

About Thunderhead

Thunderhead is the leading provider of enterprise solutions for the production of customer engagement and multi-channel business communications.

Thunderhead delivers the only enterprise platform that enables business users to manage the end-to-end process of creating intelligent personalized communications across multiple channels.

Due to its unique combination of Business User control, standards-based architecture and enterprise capabilities, Thunderhead has quickly established itself as the clear market leader for financial services organizations, counting leading businesses such as Prudential, SAGA, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Alliance and Leicester and BUPA amongst its customers. Thunderhead services its global customer base from offices located in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

For further information please visit www.thunderhead.com.

Contact details

LEWIS PR

Katie Eakins / Wanda Soler

thunderhead@lewispr.com

619-677-2700

Supporting materials

¹ Providers include car, home and travel insurance.

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