Business banking news review: week ending 6 March 2014
This week it seems that the news cycle is filled with nothing but stories of personal and business bank account providers waging war on their own customers.
The first shot across the bow this week comes from the Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief executive who went on record saying that the days of free banking are numbered. That’s right, RBS chief Ross McEwan said in a recent interview that it would be much better for everyone if paid-for current accounts and the like where the norm and that free banking went the way of the dodo.
Mr McEwan’s big argument for an end to free banking is that it will increase transparency. Now he has a bit of a point, as many banks will offer so-called free banking but only if a customer adheres to a stringent set of rules that are often impossibly Draconian, but on the other hand why do I feel like the motives of most banks are transparent enough? I mean who amongst us doesn’t think that it’s blatantly obvious that financial service providers in the UK are first and foremost concerned with squeezing every last penny from their customers they can? Seems to me those motives are pretty damned transparent as they currently stand. You’re not fooling anyone, McEwan!
So that’s the first example, and it’s obvious that it’s just bare naked greed on the part of executives. However, sometimes banks go to war against their customers out of sheer negligence, and that’s exactly what happened to Portsea’s Groundlings Theatre; the theatre almost ended having to shutter its doors after NatWest accidentally closed not one or two of its accounts but all four of them!
The company was left with absolutely no money after the erroneous account closure. The mistake was discovered by Richard Stride, the Groundlings artistic director, after he noticed he couldn’t access any of the theatre’s funds through his mobile banking app.
Now I don’t know exactly how the closures happened, but NatWest did admit they were an accident once Mr Stride alerted them to the problem. Unfortunately it took the bank bloody weeks to re-open the accounts, leaving some £10,000 out of reach of the theatre and causing incredible amounts of stress as the company struggled to stay afloat in the meantime.
Now to their credit NatWest did offer a credit to the theatre’s accounts to help smooth things over. However, it was a piddling £50. Could you imagine the look on Mr Stride’s face when his own bank offered him a paltry sum to make up for essentially stealing £10,000 of the theatre’s money? If it was me I would have most likely started a riot!