Savings and Investment Behaviour of the Consumer of Financial Services and Their Service Expectations from Banks (S/O 12349)

• Main Authors: Ahmad, Nor Hayati, Saha, Asish, Eam, Lim Hock, Katib, Mohamed Nasser, Musa, Muhammad Muhaizam, Yeok, Siew Goh
• Format: Monograph
• Language: English
• Published: UUM 2017
• Subjects: HB Economic Theory
• Online Access: https://repo.uum.edu.my/id/eprint/31552/1/12349.pdf; https://repo.uum.edu.my/id/eprint/31552/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Deciphering the relationship between domestic savings, investment and growth has occupied one of the major areas of focus in economic theory and has consequently attracted the attention of empirical research. According to World Bank data, the ratio of gross savings as a percentage of GDP of Malaysia fell from 35.3 percent in the year 2000 to 30.37 percent in 2013. The ratio was 52.08 in Singapore, 32.97 in Thailand and 33.90 in Indonesia in the year 2014. The profile of household savings reflect that the average savings of Malaysian household as percentage of adjusted disposable income, and average household savings as percentage of GDP during 2000 to 2013, were 1.37 and 3.78 percent respectively. The actual percentages fell from 1.82 percent and 5.27 percent in the year 2010 to 1.40 percent and 3.84 percent respectively by the end of 2013. If the mandatory pension contributions are taken out, the profile of household savings in the country would be further worse. Given the above perspective, present research was aimed at i) deciphering the drivers of savings of Malaysian households, ii) to assess the future savings behavior in physical and financial forms of assets and iii) to assess the service expectations of customers from banks in the country which will enable banks to workout appropriate strategies to garner business. This study is based on a primary survey of the savings and investment behavior of 1107 bank customers in three peninsular cities of Malaysia in 2013. Using Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) Framework, the key driver of savings is income, which, is found to have a positive and significant influence on savings. The influence of income is higher on the saving in financial assets than physical assets. Location however, is significantly and positively influencing the amount of saving in physical assets. Other self-perceived factors like market price and infrastructure have a significant and negative impact on the saving in physical assets. In terms of future saving behaviour, 25 percent of households are not likely to make any change in their savings profile in various financial and physical assets in which the percentage distribution of the change in savings of households in four types of asset (deposits, other financial assets, real estate and other physical assets) seems to be normally distributed. The results also indicate that the respondents tend to decrease their percentage of saving in financial assets of non-deposit, other physical assets. They are likely to increase their percentage of savings in deposits and real estate. It is also interesting to note that respondents, who are single, are more likely to increase their percentage of saving in real estate and decrease their percentage of savings in the form of deposit. Another significant findings based on logit model to estimate the predicted probability of the relative quality of customer service shows CIMB customers are less satisfied with the location, employee responsiveness, and administrative effectiveness. On the other hand, the AMMB customers are more satisfied with speed; HLB customers are more satisfied with customer orientation. BIMB is found to be most vulnerable in terms of its potential switch of its customers. The implication of the results is that banks in Malaysia need to pay more attention to working out appropriate customer retention strategies to strengthen their position in the marketplace, one of which is to keep a close tab on their branch network which is not only the major cost centre but is also the pivot of business growth by ensuring customer delight