The Customer Impact of Fraud: Make or Break for Banks

With all the news about credit card breaches at major US retailers, one might assume that a huge percentage of the population is dealing with fraud on their credit and debit cards. Interestingly, FICO recently did a consumer research study and we found that only 15% of those surveyed had experienced any sort of fraud (credit, debit, checking) in the past 12 months. That is good news, those numbers aren’t higher, but for those that did it was really a make or break moment for their relationship with that card issuer or bank.

The good news is that 79% were very satisfied with the response from their bank and often their opinion of the bank improved based on how well the incident was handled.

The really fascinating information came once we asked them what specific actions they took in response to the fraud experience, many closed the account associated with the incident. Those that were very satisfied with the response however, closed their accounts at 2x the rate of those that were not satisfied. Additionally, in nearly equal numbers they closed all accounts with that provider. Good or bad, consumers are ready to switch.

Not surprisingly customers were much more likely to recommend (19%) or open additional accounts with a provider (10%) that handled the fraud incident in a highly satisfactory manner. One interesting tidbit was that those 50 and older were much less likely to take any positive action after the incident. With only 10% recommending the provider.