Our client was a charitable foundation focussed on improving standards in the banking industry. Their 2009 report made some headway on a 'kitemark' for fair banking, but they needed further methodological and survey research help. We were asked to produce and gather the data for their latest report, ranking financial institutions on how well their products serve customers. We provided guidance on the development of questionnaires for five key banking products. We hosted the online site for the questionnaires and invited 55 banking institutions to participate in the survey. We conducted a comprehensive programme of contact and follow-up which resulted in an overall response rate of 58%, which included 5 of the top 6 banks. We advised the charity to seek UKAS accreditation for the benchmarking it was doing, which was successfully obtained.

The charity's first report was released in 2011 covering 27 financial institutions. The whole idea of systematic ranking of 'fair banks' attracted significant media and industry attention. The project was repeated in 2013, then with 32 institutions. Finally, the project was repeated in 2016 with 87 institutions spanning some 240 products, plus an additional 17 credit unions. At this point the charity was capable of delivering future reports itself.