US Banking Digital Trust Study: Which US banks have the highest levels of digital trust among consumers

• This is a preview of Business Insider Intelligence’s US Banking Digital Trust Report 2020.
• The full report is available to Business Insider Intelligence enterprise clients. To learn more about this report, email Business Insider Intelligence Client Services at bii-clientservices@businessinsider.com.

The US banks with the highest levels of digital trust in 2020 are PNC, Chase, and Citibank, according to Business Insider Intelligence’s inaugural Banking Digital Trust study. Digital trust is the confidence that consumers place in their banks’ digital channels — and that confidence is more important now than ever. As the coronavirus pandemic sparks branch closures, digital banking outages, and fraud schemes, trust is being put to the test on multiple levels. 

Building digital trust could unlock valuable benefits for banks, including increased satisfaction, engagement, and customer lifetime value. Respondents who rated their bank above average in digital trust ratings considered themselves likely to open their next account at the bank at more than twice the rate of those with low trust (22.6% versus 10.4%).

Even with high digital trust among their customers, banks still face the looming threat of tech giants: The provider cited by the highest percentage of respondents as one of their most-trusted banking services providers was fintech PayPal (43.1%), edging out respondents’ primary bank (42.5%). 

To help banks pinpoint how to maintain and grow trust among customers, our Banking Digital Trust 2020 study surveyed 2,055 US banking customers on which factors play the biggest part in determining the level of confidence they feel when using digital banking channels, namely: Security, Privacy, Reputation, Reliability, Feature Breadth, and Ease of Use.

We asked respondents to rate their bank’s performance in each of those factors, and used these rankings to determine which banks have the highest levels of digital trust overall. We also dove into our survey results to offer banks data-driven insights on how they can improve trust levels across the six factors. This study looked exclusively at the top 10 consumer-facing banks in the US by asset size.

Here are the top three leading banks in digital trust overall:

Business Insider Intelligence

PNC punched above its weight, earning the highest overall digital trust score. Despite being middle-of-the pack by asset size, the bank earned the highest customer marks in the three most important categories of the study: Security, Privacy, and Reputation. The bank’s strong lead within those heavily weighted categories, along with its second-place score in Feature Breath, were enough to offset its average customer ratings in the Ease of Use and Reliability categories. 

• Rank: 1st
• Score: 87.3 out of 100

Business Insider Intelligence

Chase was a top contender in all six pillars of trust, clinching second place overall. The bank placed second in Security and Reliability, and third in Reputation, Feature Breadth, and Ease of Use. Chase’s strong digital trust scores in Reliability, Feature Breadth, and Ease of Use likely benefit from its industry-leading IT budget — the bank reportedly spent $11.4 billion on technology in 2019 alone.

• Rank: 2nd
• Score: 86.2 out of 100

Business Insider Intelligence

Citibank took third place overall in digital trust, earning top marks in the Reliability category, and scoring among the top three in the Security and Privacy categories. The bank’s strong scores in the two most important categories of digital trust, Privacy and Security, helped it secure third place overall, despite scoring seventh place in reputation — a category in which all the largest banks struggled.

• Rank: 3rd
• Score: 85.9 out of 100

Business Insider Intelligence’s Banking Digital Trust study ranks US banks according to how confident customers feel when using their digital channels and offers analysis on what banks need to do to maintain and grow trust levels. The study is based on a January 2020 flash survey that narrowed down the six biggest factors that determine customers’ levels of digital trust, and a February-March 2020 study of 2,055 respondents on how they rank their bank on each of these six factors. 

The full report is available to Business Insider Intelligence enterprise clients. To learn more about this report, email Business Insider Intelligence Client Services at bii-clientservices@businessinsider.com. The Banking Digital Trust study ranks: Bank of America, BB&T, Chase, Capital One, Citibank, PNC, SunTrust, TD Bank, US Bank, and Wells Fargo. It also includes supplementary data on Ally Bank, BBVA USA, Chime, NFCU, USAA, and Varo Money.