Canstar Announces Its Small Business Banking Awards 2021

The past two years have been tough on small businesses, due to snap lockdowns, trading restrictions, the lack of international travel and supply chain issues. As a consequence, many small businesses have required heightened assistance. And the support of our banking institutions has never been more crucial.

It’s against this backdrop, that Canstar releases its latest Small Business Banking Awards. Assessed by our expert research panel using a unique methodology, the 2021 awards and ratings cover the following categories: Outstanding Value Awards – for Business Savings Accounts and Transaction Accounts – and the overall Bank of the Year | Small Business Award:

Bank of the Year | Small Business Award

For this year’s Bank of the Year Award, Canstar assessed five eligible banking institutions. They were rated across:

• Products
• Business banking services
• Customer satisfaction

Our expert research team crunched the numbers on over 50 banking products, including: credit cards, business loans and equipment finance, business savings and transaction accounts, insurance, international banking and risk management.

And coming out on top of this year’s rankings, taking out our Bank of the Year | Small Business Award is the ANZ.

As well as offering great products, the ANZ pulled ahead of the competition due to its leading levels of customer satisfaction. In our research, the ANZ’s customers indicated high satisfaction across a range of metrics, including customer service and problem resolution.

The ANZ also did well in terms of the return it offers on its term deposits, as the first provider to increase term-deposit rates, potentially in anticipation of a cash rate change.

For more on the ANZ's Bank of the Year | Small Business win, click here!

Outstanding Value Business Savings Accounts & Transaction Accounts

This year our research covered 24 business banking products from eight providers. Our team assessed business deposit accounts for:

From the results of our research, banking products were awarded our prestigious star ratings, with the best earning our top 5-Star awards across our three awards: Business Saver | Business High Transactor | Business Low Transactor. This year’s winners:

Award	Winners
Outstanding Value | Business Saver
Outstanding Value | Business High Transactor
Outstanding Value | Business Low Transactor

From our research, the key insights into the business banking market to emerge this year are:

• When it comes to earning good returns on their savings, businesses are in the same boat as personal banking customers, as the options are limited. At the time of our research, our team found just two savings accounts in the market offering an interest rate above 0.3%
• Businesses are also unable to escape fees on their transaction accounts; there’s not a single product in the market that’s completely fee-free. However, there are low-fee options available

Click for our Outstanding Value Business Transaction Account Star Ratings

Click for our Outstanding Value Business Savings Account Star Ratings

About the author of this page

This report was written by Canstar’s Editor, Bruce Pitchers. Bruce began his career writing about pop culture, and spent a decade in sports journalism. More recently, he’s applied his editing and writing skills to the world of finance and property. Prior to Canstar, he worked as a freelancer, including for The Australian Financial Review, the NZ Financial Markets Authority, and for real estate companies on both sides of the Tasman.