Bank of America Tops the JD Power List of the Most Hated Banks

It may be 8 years since the onset of the worst financial crisis in American history since the Great Depression but Americans still haven’t forgiven the banks for the role they played in creating the crisis.

In its latest survey of the U.S. banking industry, J.D. Power found that customer satisfaction with lenders is at a “record high as banks improve experiences for their customers, reduce problems, and create a better understanding of fees.”

The performance of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) serves as a case in point. The nation’s biggest bank by assets scored better than the average bank across all nine of the regions in which it operates. It had a particularly strong showing in Florida, where customers gave it a score of 826 out of 1,000, making it the best-performing bank in the Sunshine State.

But despite this general improvement, Jim Miller, director of banking services at J.D. Power says,  “Some banks fall far short in meeting customer needs.”

According to the financial website, Motley Fool, “At the top of this list is Bank of America (NYSE:BAC). While the nation’s second-largest bank by assets performed consistently across regions, its performance was consistently poor. Customers ranked it below the average bank in every single one of the 10 regions in which it operates a retail branch network.”

Even Citigroup with it’s history of customer dissatisfaction and who needed a $40 billion bailout from the government to survive the crisis, exceeded the average customer satisfaction score in two of the six regions in which it operates. 

Perhaps most surprising is Bank of America’s poor performance in its home markets of California and the Southeast that includes its current headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.

In California, the biggest and most important economy in the United States, Bank of America ranked dead last, outpaced by fellow California native Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and even a smattering of internationally owned lenders such as Rabobank, Bank of the West (owned by France’s BNP Paribas), and BBVA Compass (a subsidiary of Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria).