Every business (except for some of those dodgy people who promise to tarmac your drive for cash, guv) has a bank account, so I thought I’d spend some time talking about a couple of recent banking experiences.
I am with NatWest, and have been for the best part of twenty years. In general, their service is actually quite good. In particular, they have never succumbed to the cost-cutting measure of outsourcing their call centres abroad. I find their call centre staff to be both helpful, positive, and vested with enough initiative and personal power to sort out problems without having to perpetually go up the chain to “a manager”. So far, 10/10.
On the downside, my business manager changes every five minutes, and rarely knows anything about my business, which is a shame. When I first started my company, six years ago, I got a call after a few months from my business manager, asking if he could see me about my mortgage, in order to offer me a “financial review”. I asked him if he could tell me anything about what I did for a living. Did he, perhaps, know what the nature of my business was? Unfortunately, he had no idea. I explained that I thought it was a bit rich to claim to be my business manager and try to sell me a mortgage when he had not the slightest clue about my business. He was rather embarrassed. We ended the call. Down to 7/10.
Earlier this week, I was very pleased when the NatWest fraud team rang me up to query a transaction. The transaction was entirely legitimate, but it’s nice to know that they’re on the case. Back up to 9/10.
However, the fraud team had one little shortcoming. I asked the chap who called whether, since we live in times of high fraud risk, (and he should know), whether he could prove to me that he was indeed a NatWest employee. Perhaps he could quote some details of my account? A recent direct debit perhaps? Nope. NatWest’s own fraud department’s only way to prove who they were was for me to ring off and dial back in via my business manager. Definitely back to 8/10 for that.
All of which is actually very good going, when compared to the experience of a friend of mine with HSBC. You may know that the charges levied by banks are under pretty constant investigation at the moment, and this is a perfect example of why that should be the case.
He went overdrawn by under £50 with HSBC for less than two days, and was charged £25 for this transgression. Let’s look at that again. That’s the equivalent of at least 50% interest over two days. Maths isn’t my strong point but that looks to me like over 9000% interest per year- the sort of usury that surely only belongs in the topsy-turvy economy of Zimbabwe?
I’m sure HSBC isn’t alone in this, but it is about time banks exerted fair penalties on their customers. A letter doesn’t cost £25 to send. And it’s often those people who have to manage their money most carefully who are liable to dip into the red occasionally. Whatever the rules, banking should be moral.
Filed under: finance | Tagged: bank, banking, business, fianncial services, finance, HSBC, Natwest, start a business
You could open a can of worms here Nick as the tales of banking mal practice are many. But here is another one about banking procedures.
I have two accounts with HSBC so when they ring me out the blue to talk to me about my account I naturally ask them which one. They refuse to tell me until I go through their security checks by telling them my postcode, name and so on. I refuse to give them my details unless they answer me a simple question that would give me some modicom of comfort that they are indeed HSBC. Again the response is call us back – and spend an age in a queue and talk to someone who has no idea why you were called.
There seems to be a complete lack of awareness that there might be a problem with their approach – and clearly not many other customers respond as I do as they probably only have one account.
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