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Banking
The Co-operative Bank features in our benchmarks of 12 UK banks, covering account opening, first payments, card freezing, Open Banking and customer support.
Key takeaways from 9 Case Studies
Slower to open an account than challenger banks, which needed fewer clicks and fewer days
Features like card freezing and Open Banking exist, but aren't fast or easy to reach
Re-benchmarked 900 days later, testing whether claimed feature parity holds up
Deconstructing the notion that these banks have feature parity in 2023.
Historically, bank cards were relatively simple rectangles of plastic. But not any more.
A unique opportunity to revisit these 12 banks, re-benchmark them, and highlight what 900 days of progress looks like.
There are some clear winners and losers here. But overall, the user experience of customer support is desperate for some innovation.
Although the challenger banks were considerably faster, all of the banks could improve the experience of using Open Banking.
Quite clearly, if you want to make international payments frequently you have to use a challenger bank, or Barclays.
Whilst the challenger banks have made this feature more accessible, they had a poor overall experience. Barclays was considerably better.
With a few exceptions, there wasnt a huge variance in the amount of effort, or time taken to send a payment from any of the banks.
The challenger banks were significantly quicker (in days) and required less effort (in clicks) to get an active account.
If features can be coded in minutes, thoughtful design is what wins
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