Azernews.Az

The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) is the most trusted bank in the country, an international poll has revealed.
It still holds its first place among local financial institutions though the percentage has declined from 50.5% in 2005 to 27% in 2008. Unlike the IBA, UniBank seems to have lost its second place to Bank of Baku that was once ranked third with 5 percent in 2005 following UniBank (6%), according to the Business Insight International Research GROUP's poll.
The biggest drop was registered for Bank Standard which is replaced by Atabank on the 2008 ranking. Like in the previous survey of 2005, Texnikabank is still regarded as the least trustworthy bank despite a slight growth in the percentage points compared to the previous study figures.
Overall, the analysis shows that the two charts for particular years of 2005 and 2008 are more or less the same in terms of the rankings of banks by the metric of trust.
When asked to identify the measures that banks should do to gain people's trust, respondents overwhelmingly believed that reduction of loan interests can best contribute to the banks being more trusted (28%). Certain customer service improvements could also have a greater impact on people's growing more confidence in a particular bank as was assumed by 25% of respondents. Another important feature of trustable banks is the long history of operations (8.2%). Due to the corruption risks that customers are frustrated to face, some 5.5% people would suggest that banks should refrain from lying to their customers when they charge interests from the loans in addition to having their funds insured (5%). Equally important is that banks should make it possible for their customers to withdraw their money whenever they want (5%). Delays may also undermine people's confidence in banks, according to 3.4% of respondents. Yet, the biggest majority (33.5%) stated that they count on the banks. Though mentioned less, respondents additionally propose more advertisements and branches for banks as well as public reporting for the people to grow trust in them.
As for the reliability and image of companies, the big majority of respondents were unable to name any particular company name (60%). Yet, among the given answers, the list is topped by oil producing companies with BP being the most-mentioned one (6%), followed by other oil companies (5.4%).
Cellular provider Azercell is on the list of the most prominent and reliable companies. Next was AKKORD Group of Companies (2.3%).
In the field of TV channels ANS with 0.6% of responses seems to have no popular competitor. It is also noticeable that no state-owned company was mentioned as a reputable entity.
The study was carried out April 2-30 among Baku population using the Classic Telephone Survey Technique of Quantitative Research Method. 352 respondents involved in the survey were selected on a random basis.