Methodology for banking ratings

You may have noticed (you did, right?) that our current account pages, tables and reviews come with star ratings. They’re there to help consumers figure out how good a company and its products are, at a single glance. But they wouldn’t be fair, and we wouldn’t be transparent, if we didn’t tell you how we came up with them.

We publish two types of star ratings:

Finder’s expert ratings

You’ll find our expert ratings on our banking pages. We rate bank accounts using a system of one to five stars.

★★★★★ – Excellent

★★★★★ – Good

★★★★★ – Average

★★★★★ – Subpar

★★★★★ – Poor

How it works

To come up with our expert ratings, we score products across a number of key areas:

• App rating. This is calculated by averaging the banking app’s score in the Google Play Store and the App Store.
• Fees. We consider whether there is a monthly fee for the account and also whether the account charges for things like cash deposits, ATM withdrawals, paying a direct debit or having your bank card delivered. If there are charges for making purchases abroad or taking out money from a foreign ATM , that is also taken into account.
• Customer service. We score this based on user feedback, industry reports, customer reviews and forum discussions.
• Account access. How can you access your account – through a mobile app, online banking, a bank branch or telephone banking? We also look at whether customer support channels are 24/7.
• Payment features. Can you deposit cash and cheques into your account, as well as make and receive international payments? These features are not as universal as you might think. We also examine whether there are other payment features available, such as a cashback programme or option to round-up spare change from your purchases.
• Extra features. Here, we look at additional tools that may come with an account, such as spending categories, budget planners, saving pots or card freezing, as well as any special features, such as the ability to check your credit score.

We average all these scores to come up with an overall Finder rating, which is rounded to the nearest half star.

Customer satisfaction survey ratings

In December 2021, we ran a customer satisfaction survey on current accounts. 2,282 people answered and told us how happy they are with their current account provider. We’ve turned their answers into a star rating of between one and five.

★★★★★ – Excellent

★★★★★ – Good

★★★★★ – Average

★★★★★ – Subpar

★★★★★ – Poor

Customer satisfaction ratings methodology

The survey asked respondents how satisfied they are with their current account on a scale from one to five, and also whether they would recommend it to a friend or not.

We turned the answers into an overall star rating that takes into account:

• How many people would recommend the account vs how many people wouldn’t. If you say you’d recommend your bank to a friend when sitting at the pub in front of a pint, it must mean it’s really good (the bank, not the pint). This forms 50% of our customer satisfaction rating.
• How many people rated a provider five out of five. Wow, five out of five? This counts for 25% of our customer satisfaction rating.
• The average score each current account provider got. This tells us if a bank offers quite a solid service even though it doesn’t have loads of top ratings… or if it’s just not that great. This parameter forms the last 25% of our overall customer satisfaction rating.

The final rating is then rounded to the nearest half star.