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Even before the lockdown resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, consumers were hankering for more ways to gain access to their financial services providers and accounts via mobile apps, online tools, telephone and branch access.

So says a new survey from Hearts & Wallets, which also says that retirement planning is gaining in importance to consumers since just last year—with the percentage of those focusing on it rising from 2019's 35 percent an additional two percentage points in a single year.

To determine which firms are doing better than others, survey respondents were asked to rank their financial services providers on 27 key attributes for 5 key service dimensions and 3 pricing dimensions, and the results on pricing, at least, don't show user perception of value all that high for anyone—with consumers "more confused about pricing than in former years, with [o]nly 25 percent of customers hav[ing] a good understanding of how their providers earn money," according to the report.