Three years ago I found myself queuing up all morning in a bank in Australia to show my passport, so that the bank could call my UK bank and confirm who I was. All of this effort was just to gain access to my own money. Yet even after wasting hours of my holiday time, my UK bank said they still couldn’t be sure I was who I said I was. So they’d only let me withdraw £50 a day from my account until I got back to Britain. The conversation ended: “Surely that is enough for you to get by on?” I felt like Oliver asking for more. So as soon as I got home I switched banks. But sadly this level of disdain for customers is prevalent among high-street banks – anyone I speak to can usually match or better my story with their own tale of woe.
That’s why the news that there are new banks gathering on the sidelines ready to take on the big names has got me excited. Lord Levene, former chairman of Lloyd’s of London, has announced ‘Project New Bank’. Levene is setting up an investment vehicle that will be listed on Aim this month. The plan is to create a retail bank with between 400 and 600 branches by buying up the ‘good half’ of Northern Rock and possibly the 600 branches Lloyds has been ordered to sell by the EU to comply with state aid rules.
The new bank will offer savings and loan products, including current accounts and mortgages, but it will not have an investment arm, and will be financed by customer deposits rather than wholesale money. Levene has said the bank will aim to offer a better level of service to customers and to empower managers to make decisions in the branches.
Levene isn’t the only one hoping to capitalise on the public’s anger with bankers. Spanish bank Santander has been expanding into the UK, Tesco is set to launch a high-street bank, and US-backed Metro Bank is opening its first branch in Holborn, London, this month. It hopes to win custom through better service, longer opening hours, free coin-counting machines and free dog biscuits – all good stuff, bar the last one, which is just bizarre.
The trouble is that both Levene’s bank and Metro have a mountain to climb in the form of customer apathy. It is notoriously tough to get people to switch bank accounts. And with both Levene and Metro bank admitting that they hope to compete on the basis of customer service, rather than competitive rates, it’s hard to see many people moving.
FirstDirect has topped customer satisfaction surveys for years, but has only a fraction of the customers its high-street rivals have. So if we want these new ‘friendly’ banks to work, we will have to vote with our feet.