• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 12, 2010

Despite ongoing privacy concerns, a clear majority of U.S. consumers -- 64% -- now pay bills online, according to a new report from comScore. Year-over-year, that represents an increase of 19 percentage points. Yet, as the economic climate continued to weigh on consumer sentiment, bank and credit card institutions experienced an overall decline in customer satisfaction for the second consecutive year, according to Marc Trudeau, senior director at comScore.

"It is evident that the economic climate of the past year has affected not only consumers' attitudes and perceptions of their financial institutions, but also how they are interacting with them," said Trudeau.

"As economic conditions begin to improve, it will be important for banks and other financial institutions to focus intently on improving customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in order to retain and grow market share," Trudeau added. "Those who are effective in doing so will be in the best position to take advantage of new opportunities in the market as the economy returns to form."

Also of note, despite significant investments in new applications, tools and functionality, customer satisfaction with bank Web sites declined at all of the top five banks, according to comScore.

For its "State of Online Banking" report, comScore surveyed more than 2,500 U.S. Internet users, and then compared those findings to behavioral data from its 1 million-person online consumer panel.

This year, 70% of survey respondents reported being satisfied with their primary bank, a marginal decrease versus last year.

Despite what comScore calls a "tenuous macroeconomic environment," however, the U.S. equity markets' considerable recovery in 2009 actually drove a net increase in customer satisfaction among brokerage customers. Indeed, some 64% of respondents expressed satisfaction with their primary firm this year -- up 6 percentage points versus a year ago. This helped brokerage firms surpass credit card institutions' overall satisfaction level, which declined 2 points to 60%.

When opening a new checking or savings account, free checking continued to reign as the most important attribute with 67% of consumers selecting this feature, followed by low minimum balance - 37% -- proximity of branches/ATMs - 36% -- and bill payments -- 24%.

Of particular note, while most attributes experienced a marginal decrease in importance versus a year ago, quality of customer service surged 18 percentage points to 22% of respondents in 2010 -- indicating a rapidly emerging point of differentiation among financial institutions.