Ranking of Microfinance in Cameroon

The aim of this ranking is to inform on the relative satisfaction of customers for each of the commercial banks operating within the Cameroonian market. A customers’ satisfaction for the services received from his/her current bank is assessed across the following dimensions:

- The willingness to recommend his/her banking service provider to a friend or relative.

- Her/his perception of transparency in the services charges he/she pays.

- Her/his perception of abuse in the tariffication of services he/she consumes from the bank.

For this January 2024 ranking reporting on the banking customers satisfaction for the last semester of 2023, a survey has been conducted online and in person for a randomly selected sample. Below is the survey’s questionnaire sample initially administered in French:

Preamble: This questionnaire aims to assess the level of satisfaction of users of banking services in Cameroon. It is designed and administered by Trends & Poor, an independent research and socio-economic analysis service of LLC Trends & Invest. The results will be published and may help consumers to optimally choose their banking service provider. Thank you for your participation.

1- Gender

Answer options :

- Male

- Female

2- What is you age ?

Answer options :

- Under 25

- Between 25 years and 34 years

- Between 35 years and 50 years

- Over 50 years old

3- What is your professional sector?

Answer options:

- Employee, private sector

- Employee, public sector

- Self-employed

4- Which of the bank below do you benefit from its services?

Answer options:

- CBC

- CCA

- BICEC

- Access Bank

- Atlantic Bank

- BGFI

- CitiBank

- Ecobank

- NFC Bank

- SCB

- SGBC

- Standard Chartered

- Union Bank of Cameroon

- UBA

- Bange Bank

- Other: Microfinance

5- How likely are you (on a scale of 1 to 10) to recommend your bank to a friend or relative?

Answer options: 1 to 10

6- Is there another bank that you have heard of or know of that would provide better quality services than your current bank?

Answer options:

- Yes

- No

7- Do you have access to online banking at your current bank?

Answer options:

- Yes

- No

8- Do you think your bank is transparent about the pricing of the services it provides you?

Answer options:

- Yes

- No

9- Do you feel like you are being taken advantage of by your bank?

Answer options:

- Yes

- No

10- Do you know the authority in Cameroon where you can complain in the event of abuse by your bank?

Answer options:

- Yes

- No

11- Please, what is your highest educational level?

Answer options:

- CEP

- BEPC

- Probatoire

- Baccalaureate

- Licence

- Master

- PhD

12- Which of the flaws below do you blame your bank the most for?

Answer options:

- Lack of transparency in pricing

- Lack of friendliness/courtesy from the bank’s staff

- Long waiting times to be served at a branch

- Lack of convenience and comfort facilities (seats, toilets, large space, etc.)

- Delays in processing requests

- Others

Thanks for your participation !

The overall ranking is based on three central questions capturing the three dimensions for accessing customers’ satisfaction:

- How likely are you (on a scale of 1 to 10) to recommend your bank to a friend or relative?

- Do you think your bank is transparent about the pricing of the services it provides you?

- Do you feel like you are being taken advantage of by your bank?

The intermediary overall score for each bank is constructed as follows:

1- For the first question: the arithmetic average score for the willingness to recommend the bank to friends and relatives is computed for each bank and then is divided by 10. The statistic is between 0 and 1.

2- For the second question: the proportion of “Yes” answers among respondents for each bank is computed. This statistic is between 0 and 1.

3- For the third question: the proportion of “No” answers among respondents for each bank is computed. This statistic is between 0 and 1.

A weighted average of the three statistics is computed with the weights of ½, ¼ and ¼ for the first, the second and the third statistics respectively. This statistic is between 0 and 1. The final overall statistic for each bank is weighted by the bank’s proportion of respondents within the overall survey random sample. This last weighting is to correct for small representativeness bias as the number of respondents by bank is not balanced, and another assumption is that these proportions of respondents represent market shares which in turn implicitly inform on clients’ relative appreciation of the quality of the services offered by all commercial banks in the market. This final customers’ satisfaction index is between 0 and 1, and can be represented in percentage terms between 0 and 100%.