Methodology for banking scores

You may have noticed (you did, right?) that our current account pages, tables and reviews come with scores. 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 2 types of score:

Finder’s expert scores

You’ll find our expert scores on our banking pages. We rate bank accounts using a system of 1 to 5 blue stars.

★★★★★ – Excellent

★★★★★ – Good

★★★★★ – Average

★★★★★ – Subpar

★★★★★ – Poor

How it works

We assess 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.
• Green credentials. We score this based on our green bank ratings, which looks at a provider’s operation emissions, net zero targets and financing of fossil fuels.
• 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 score.

How we decide which features are most important

Using and comparing current accounts then sharing our findings is what we do.

Each factor in our scoring is weighted. We asked consumers what matters to them when choosing a current account, and took this into account when deciding how to weight our scores.

Your reviews and our customer survey

You can see review stars at the top of our review pages, if we’ve received more than 10. These are from consumers just like you who use our site and want to review the products and providers they use. We include responses we’ve received in our annual customer satisfaction surveys. We also show the results of each survey in a league table in guides and in our awards pages.

In December 2023, we ran a customer satisfaction survey on current accounts. 750 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 1 and 5 and we show this in our annual league table of bank account providers.

★★★★★ – Excellent

★★★★★ – Good

★★★★★ – Average

★★★★★ – Subpar

★★★★★ – Poor

Customer satisfaction score methodology

The survey asked respondents how satisfied they are with their current account on a scale from 1 to 5, 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 score.