TABInsights

Thursday, 23 July 2026

FI and Consumer Surveys

Understanding what customers experience, what institutions think, and where markets are heading requires evidence from the ground. TABInsights designs and delivers large-scale consumer and financial institution surveys that produces primary intelligence that banks, financial services firms, and technology companies use to benchmark performance, validate strategy, and lead industry conversations.

Primary research at scale

The most important questions in financial services are often the hardest to answer from the inside. How do customers genuinely experience your institution compared to the competition? How are peer banks approaching a technology investment decision, and what does that mean for how you position your own priorities? What do global financial and corporate institutions actually think about RMB currency adoption for cross-border payments, and how is that sentiment shifting?

These questions require primary research, surveys designed with rigour, fielded at scale, and interpreted by people who understand what the findings mean in the context of the industry.

TABInsights has been conducting primary survey research in financial services for more than 25 years. We field primary surveys across more than 30 markets globally drawing on established consumer panels, our own practitioner network of more than 300,000 banking professionals globally, and direct institutional relationships that give our surveys both the reach and the credibility to produce findings that institutions act on.

We offer two distinct survey programmes, each addressing a fundamentally different research focus. Both are available as published reports for general purchase and as bespoke, proprietary engagements for clients who need research designed and delivered around their specific strategic requirements.

Talk to our survey team

BankQuality Consumer Surveys

What your customers really think — independently measured

Banks have more customer data than ever before. What most do not have is an independent, comparative assessment of how their customers experience them relative to the competition — one that the bank itself did not commission, did not design, and cannot be accused of having shaped.

That is what BankQuality provides. The BankQuality Consumer Survey programme measures retail banking customer experience, satisfaction, and behaviour across countries and markets in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Each survey draws on responses from a nationally representative panel of retail banking customers — typically 1,000 to 2,500 respondents per country — and produces country-level rankings of banks, digital-only banks, and financial platforms.

What it measures

Overall customer satisfaction and recommendation behaviour
Product experience — savings, lending, wealth, and insurance
Channel experience — mobile banking, internet banking, branch, and contact centre
Digital adoption patterns and mobile-first behaviour
Bank selection criteria — why customers choose their primary bank and what would cause them to switch
Response to economic conditions — cost of living pressures, interest rate sensitivity, and household financial stress

What banks use it for

BankQuality findings give retail banking leadership teams an independent, quantitative assessment of how customers perceive their institution relative to domestic peers and digital challengers. They are used to identify the specific service dimensions on which an institution is outperforming or falling short of market expectations, to track customer satisfaction trends year on year, and to build the evidence base for customer experience investment decisions. Findings also feature in board presentations, investor communications, and award submissions where independent third-party validation of customer quality is required.

How to access

BankQuality country reports are available for purchase as published reports — currently covering China and a growing number of markets across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Banks that want findings tailored to their specific competitive context — a defined peer group, a particular customer segment, or coverage across multiple markets — can commission bespoke survey engagements designed around their requirements.

Sample published report: BankQuality Report China 2024 — based on 2,095 consumer responses, covering banks, digital-only banks, and platforms across China.

Commission a BankQuality survey

Global Financial Institution Surveys

What the industry thinks — at the scale that makes it credible

Some of the most strategically important questions in financial services cannot be answered by asking customers. They require asking institutions — treasury officers, transaction banking heads, corporate finance executives, risk and compliance leaders, technology decision-makers — what they think, what they are doing, and what they intend to do next.

TABInsights' Global Financial Institution Survey programme produces exactly that. These are practitioner-level surveys fielded among senior professionals at banks, corporates, and financial institutions globally, on topics where understanding sentiment and behaviour at scale generates intelligence that no number of individual conversations can replicate.

Topics we have covered

RMB internationalisation — cross-border renminbi usage in trade settlement, cash management, investment, and financing; offshore RMB centre development; and institutional adoption intentions, fielded globally in partnership with China Construction Bank and The Asian Banker
Technology transformation priorities — how banks are allocating technology investment across core modernisation, cloud, AI, and digital channels, and what they expect to prioritise over the next three years
Transaction banking and payments — how corporates and financial institutions select transaction banking partners, what capability gaps they identify, and how cross-border payment behaviour is evolving

What clients use it for

Global FI surveys are commissioned by financial institutions that want to understand how peers, clients, and counterparties think about a strategic issue at scale — producing the evidence base that individual interviews or proprietary data cannot provide. They are also used by institutions that want to establish a credible, independent thought leadership position on a topic of strategic importance, with primary survey data produced under the TABInsights and Asian Banker brand providing the authority that proprietary research cannot.

Partnership model

Global FI surveys are typically structured as partnership engagements. A client institution co-commissions the survey, contributes to question design, and receives proprietary access to the full dataset and findings ahead of any public release. The published report carries both the TABInsights and client institution's branding and is distributed through our global network of banking and financial services professionals — providing reach the client institution alone could not generate.

Sample published report: RMB Internationalisation Report — a global survey of RMB adoption in cross-border trade settlement, cash management, and investment, conducted in partnership with China Construction Bank.

How we work

Every engagement begins with a scoping call and a written proposal that sets out our understanding of your objectives, our proposed methodology, the deliverable format, timeline, and fee structure. We do not issue generic proposals. The proposal you receive will demonstrate that we have understood your specific requirements — the markets you are targeting, the decisions you need to make, and the competitive or regulatory questions that the research needs to answer.

Commission a global FI survey

Geographic coverage

Consumer surveys — China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa

Global institutional surveys — worldwide reach through TABInsights' and The Asian Banker's practitioner network across more than 100 banking markets

Talk to our survey team

Whether you need to understand what your customers think of your institution, how your peers are approaching a strategic decision, or what the institutional market thinks about a topic where your organisation wants to lead — contact us at maquino@tab.global.