We had conducted an online survey to find out how banking services in Nepal are being used and perceived by their users. This article is entirely based on those responses. Thank you Muktinath Bikash Bank for supporting us in conducting this survey.  

Over the years, Banks have become an integral part of our daily life and economy. With the shift to digitalization and modernization of the economy, banks have definitely made life easier for people to manage their cash and transactions. With these shifts and increasing dependency on banks more than ever, the use of banking services and users’ banking experience is one of the topics with the minimal amount of research done. Out of curiosity, we conducted an online survey to find out how people have been feeling about the banking services provided by the respective banks.

About Respondents

Respondents were mostly urban educated youth with access to the internet, in the age bracket of 18-40, mostly being from 22-26 age group. The data was collected through social media users, primarily from page followers of KMAG. In total, we got 219 responses out of which 160 were males and 59 were females. 

In the list of questionnaires, one of the questions was “which is your favorite bank from Nepal as per your own experience,” and another being “which bank do you think is the worst.” Among 219, 27 respondents were undecided and 192 casted their votes for “best” and the “worst.” To build the conclusion on more strong foundation, we wanted to make sure respondents voice their opinion per their experience for which we had also asked them to reveal their primary bank.

Out of the total participants, a majority of 89.6% have multiple bank accounts though 19.5% of them just use one of those accounts. The remaining 10.4% claimed to have an only bank account. Out of all those banks, Nabil Bank is the primary bank for 36 participants (which was the highest no. of primary account holders in a particular bank). After Nabil, most of them were primary users of NIC Asia, Global IME, and Siddhartha Bank.

Nabil is voted as “Favorite Bank”

Nabil Bank seems to be the most favorite and popular among the respondents. With a total of 45 votes, it was voted the “most liked” bank. Among them, 29 were the primary account holders of the bank. Under “least liked,” it only got 4 votes.

To briefly talk about Nabil Bank, Nabil Bank is an ‘A’ class commercial bank which was founded in 1984 A.D. (2041 B.S.). It was established as Nepal’s first private sector bank incepted by multinational investors with the objective of providing modern, international-standard financial services. It was first established as Nepal Arab Bank Limited. In 1995, Dubai-government owned the majority of shares was bought by Binod Chaudhary.

NIC Asia is “least favourite”

With 76 votes for “worst bank,” NIC Asia seems like the “least liked” bank from Nepal as per the responses. Interestingly though, it has also been voted as “favorite bank” by 17 respondents.

After NIC Asia, Nepal Investment Bank seems like the second “least favorite” bank from Nepal with 23 votes against the bank.

On being asked the reason for disliking the bank, most of the participants seem to agree on the same point and that is “terrible” customer service of the bank. Similarly, other reasons were bad internet/mobile banking facilities, fraud-like business practices, and lack of important banking services/products being provided by the. Not to forget few were unhappy about the lack of branch/ATM services.

The detailed data are presented in the table below:

A survey is a list of questions aimed at extracting specific data from a particular group of people so that the surveyor can gain knowledge and insights into various topics of interest and then mostly generalize the result. How to design a survey questionnaire completely depends upon the purpose behind the survey. Depending on the purpose, questions are framed.

Let’s understand this way, surveyor seeks to know anything based on either of the following grounds:

1. They don’t know anything, they are curious to find out, and they seek for answers. Example: I don’t know many people smoke and I want to find out by asking everyone out there.
2. They think they know but they are not sure and they want to find out if what they think they know is actually true or false. Example: I think 50% of Nepalese do smoke but I am not sure yet and I want to validate my assumption by surveying.
3. They strongly believe that what they know is the facts and now they want to interpret the world based on the “facts” they live by. Example: I strongly believe that smoking is bad and raising tax and making it expensive is the way to discourage people to smoke. I want to survey to find out how many Nepalese believe the same and agree with raising taxes and making it expensive would discouarge people to smoke.

Whatever grounds you are holding, you must frame your questionnaire according to that. So before working on the questionnaire ask yourself if you are trying to know the unknown or are you trying to validate or crosscheck what you think you know or you are trying to pass judgment or views based on your preset theory/hypothesis that your understanding is based upon.

This is how it goes:

You already have a theory and you want to analyze people based on the theory.

Let’s take for example “Job satisfaction Survey.” In this case, as per your theory/hypothesis, to be called “satisfied” one must be displaying so and so traits and views; if not, the person is not satisfied in his/her job. Based on that, you will be designing a questionnaire and see how many people meet the criteria to pass your judgment. If your theory says, highly satisfied people have flexible working hours, one of your questions will be something like “Can you come to your office at whatever time you want and can leave per your own wish as long as you are doing what you are paid for? Yes/No/Depends.” Likewise, there will be other questions set in a fashion to funnel your judgment regarding what percentage of people are satisfied with their job and work.

You have a theory or hypothesis that you want to validate or crosscheck

In this case, you have an assumption but you are not sure of and you want to crosscheck or validate by testing it on people. For example let’s say you think “Most arranged marriage people are unhappy,” and you want to validate your claim or crosscheck the truth in it by surveying among arranged marriage couples. Your questions will be something like “If you have to rate your marriage in terms of joy and happiness in it, how much will you rate on a 1 to 10 scale?” followed by questions like “if you have a time machine, would you go back right before the marriage and take your time to find out someone to have a love marriage? Yes/No/Maybe”

You don’t have any theory or hypothesis and you are only to find out unseen/unknown reality

In this case, you don’t have any preconceived thoughts or assumptions and you are plainly trying to learn or find out in an open-minded fashion.  Like for example, You don’t know how many educated youth from Nepal actually do smoke, nor you know why they smoke despite its negative effect and you are set out to find out the answer by surveying. In such surveys, your questions will be like “do you smoke? Yes/No. “If you smoke, how many cigarettes do you smoke per day?” “despite its negative effect, why do you still smoke?”etc.

Sometimes, you can have a mixed approach, wherein the topic of your interest that you are surveying on, part of it is something you strongly believe being fact, part of it is something you are unsure about, and part of it is something you don’t know a thing about and you are willing to learn.  Like for example, you strongly believe happy couples display so and so traits, and you think couples from love marriages are happier but you are not sure of, and you don’t know at all if personal happiness is valued more in marriage or responsibilities and social factors in the context of Nepal. So part of your questionnaires will be driven by your theory that you consider as being fact, part of it will be intended to cross-verify your assumption, and part of it will be purely seeking truth as it is without any deliberate attempt to frame your assumption.

Bottom line, you should know your ground, the purpose of surveying, what you intend to do afterward, based on which you should be working on your questionnaires.  Your questionnaires will be designed according to your intention, so there is no hard and fast rule but make sure, in the end, you gather all the relevant information so put together to build a conclusion and for that, you need to think about what all needs to be asked to fill up the blocks and connect the dots.

Questioning is one of the defining traits of human beings. We are humans because we question. We questioned nature and we invented God. We questioned righteousness and we invented religion. We questioned our surroundings and we invented science. Question is the mother of all our beliefs, values, thoughts, and ideas which took us to answers to frame our worldview and life. Without question, there would be no critical thinking, no discourse, and discussions, no wonders, no curiosity. From the time we start speaking, we begin questioning, as you can see how often a 3-year-old kid asks. That curious monkey is what we humans are.

All questions, some way or other, are an attempt of knowing something, unless a rhetoric question (A question like “you eat meat and you call yourself an animal lover?” isn’t really a question seeking for an answer. It’s a rhetoric question intended to taunt or provoke). Though the purpose of every question is to know something, that “something” can be classified into two classes. One, Question being asked to know the answer. For example, “how to go to Ratnapark from here?” “what time is it?” a person asking an expert “what is MCC?” or a student asking a teacher “what is quantum?” In such cases, questions are asked to know the answer. Two, questions being asked not to know the answer but to know the respondent. For example, a teacher asking a student “what is quantum?,” or HR asking question in a job interview, or market researchers asking questions like “Which is your favorite movie?” where the researcher intended to find out genre you like so that can plan the business accordingly.

So basically the purpose of any question is either to know the literal answer or know the respondent analytically and sometimes a mixed approach is taken to build a complete picture of the intended goal.

Whatsoever, questioning is also a form of communication and thus same rules for effective communication applies here – Clarity on what you want to ask, according to the audience, in an approach that feels pleasant and aesthetic.

Sometimes, you ask only one question and you are done and sometimes you ask series of questions to reach to the intended goal. Let’s take a case for example:

In the case of literal question:  You want to go to Tinkune from Thamel but you don’t know how to go.  So first you ask “where do I get a bus for Tinkune?” respondent says “from Ratnapark,” then you ask “how to go to Ratnapark” and the respondent says “from this way” and you ask “what are the timings for the bus?” and so on.

In the case of analytics question:  You want to know how much the respondent spends on restaurant bills. So you ask “how often do you go out for eating?” respondent says “6-8 times a month” how much do you spend in general each time, respondent says “Rs. 500” Back of your head, you calculate and find out how much the person spends monthly over restaurant bills in an analytical way.

People are not always good at sharing their stories or information or views (or in some cases not comfortable or willing to). Questions are a way to help them giving out their story or information or view in pieces. Thus, the burden lies on the interviewer to ask the right question in a manner the respondent will feel comfortable to answer or get the question to answer precisely. Art of questioning is thus all about knowing how to frame questions, connecting one question after another, funneling in an intended way to finally create pieces of blocks to put together to get the complete picture of the topic.

Remember there is always a purpose behind asking any question. No one asks questions for sake of asking. As there is a Nepali proverb najane gau ko baato nasodhnu (don’t ask for the direction to the village that you are not going to anyway). We ask questions only when we want to find out something for an intended purpose. So when you are framing a question, first create a mental image of what is that bigger picture that you want to create or looking for. Then create questionnaires that can lead you to that ultimate goal, can get you all the information and views to assemble together to get the final result or conclusion.

That’s the art of questioning.