Customer retention drops to new low as two-thirds of customers consider swapping insurance and banking providers this year.

Almost two-thirds (61%) of consumers are actively considering "switching" insurance providers in the next 12 months, with 63% saying the same about their banks.

500 consumers across the US and UK were surveyed about attitudes to their current financial services providers by enterprise communications company, Thunderbird.

The customer loyalty [1] survey also asked consumers about the quality of communications received from their banks and insurance companies over the last year. Only 26% said they felt their current bank or insurance company sent them "personalised" communications that were immediately "relevant" to their needs.

In fact, only a very small number of the consumers surveyed feel a sense of "loyalty" to their insurance providers and banks (17% and 16% respectively).

“Maintaining customer loyalty continues to be a key issue for our banking and insurance clients,” said Glen Manchester, CEO of Thunderhead. “Customers have never had higher service expectations and have come to expect today’s providers to communicate with them across the range of devices they use in their daily lives.”

The research also shows that the proliferation of mobile phones, BlackBerrys and social networking sites is impacting how customers want to communicate.

Surprisingly the research found that 50% of consumers said that receiving communications in real-time was "very important" to them, with 76% saying they would like the option to receive communications via email and even 40% preferring the option of having relevant, timely information delivered to them via personalised web portals, including social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.

Only half of those surveyed wanted to continue to receive communications from their bank or insurance company via the post.

Elsewhere in Finance Week, Neil Craig looks at how company directors ought to reconsider their approach to customer engagement [2].