Yesterday we looked at how the primary sectors represented by the FTSE 100 fared in our Social Media and The City report. Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology companies put in the best combined performance, followed by Oil & Gas Producers, both ahead of more consumer-facing industries like Retailers and Media.

Today, we’re looking in a bit more detail at the Banking, Financial Services and Life Insurance sectors – a collective group of 14 companies that have seen their fair share of criticism over the last few years.

By plotting these companies on the chart below, which maps their respective Awareness Quotients (a measure of status) and Engagement Quotients (a measure of participation and interaction), we see that only Barclays and Aviva occupy a leadership position. HSBC’s score seems mainly driven by status, with little social media engagement. However, RBS, Hargreaves Lansdown and Standard Chartered show higher engagement than awareness scores, suggesting a willingness to listen and participate.

Although spread across all four quadrants of the grid, the banks perform best overall within this combined financial sector group. With the exception of Aviva, life insurance companies lag the rest of the financial sector – a big surprise given that most are well-known, consumer-facing household names.