CUSTOMERS’ PREFERENCE FOR E – BANKING SERVICES: A CASE STUDY OF SELECTED BANKS IN SIERRA LEONE

The development and the increasing progress that is being experienced in the Information and Communication Technology have brought about a lot of changes in almost all facets of life. In the Banking Industry, it has been in the form of online banking, which is now replacing the traditional banking practice. Online banking has a lot of benefits which add value to customers’ satisfaction in terms of better quality of service offerings and at the same time enable the banks gain more competitive advantage over other competitors. There are some associated risks identified in the study that seem to hinder the success of e-banking services and thus constitute major concern to both financial institutions and customers. This paper therefore, examines, if customers’ choice of banks is influenced by the quality of e–banking services provided. Stratified sampling was used; while the survey Instrument was a developed Questionnaire comprising open ended and Likert type of questions. The Likert type questions have a 4 point scale (indicating 1 = very comfortable and 4 = uncomfortable) divided into two (2) sections: personal details and customers’ e-banking preference in Sierra Leone. The instrument contained 36 items and was administered to about 400 respondents, while 360 completed and returned their Questionnaire. The statistical techniques used for the analysis were the Chi–Square and correlation. The Chi–Square analysis revealed that the quality of e–banking services offered by banks have significant influence on their customers at 95%, 3 degree of freedom. The paper recommends that various measures should be put in place to ensure more security such as installation of encrypted software, verification system of customer’s identification cards, frequent change of password, examining test questions and using mixed password such as the use of alphanumeric amongst others. The paper concludes that e –banking has become important phenomenon in the banking industry and it will continue as more progress and innovations are made in information technology.