Business banking news review: week ending 28 Aug 2014
A mass exodus is happening in the personal and business bank account world, with account holders desperately looking for greener pastures wherever they can.
This week, the news cycle was filled to the brim with stories featuring how anyone and everyone has become disillusioned with the British financial services industry. If it’s not stories about Brits jumping ship for foreign banks, there’s stories about how savers might end up stuffing their mattresses instead of using current accounts or savings accounts any more – it’s honestly gotten to that point, believe it or not!
The big winner right now, in a landscape where large banks are closing branches left and right, is a little Swedish bank known as Handelsbanken. Originally founded to help Swedish expats find a place they trust to put their cash, it’s grown – surprisingly only by word of mouth, considering you’ll never see a Handelsbanken advert anywhere – to a network of over 175 branches from Scotland to Cornwall. Sure, it’s a tiny little bank, but it offers bespoke, custom-tailored banking products – and unlike the majority of big banks in the UK right now it’s squeaky clean, as Handelsbanken kept its nose out of any of those mis-selling scandals that have been infuriating customers.
Of course sometimes just finding a new bank isn’t enough for the truly upset or paranoid. The fallout from the changes to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs powers – in which the taxman will be able to raid bank accounts in search of unpaid tax – has created an even larger groundswell of distrust against banks and building societies in the UK. The Building Societies Association recently went up against HMRC directly with an official statement warning that such over-reaching on the part of the tax authority could easily lead to Brits both figuratively and literally stuffing their mattresses with money instead of depositing them in financial service institutions.
So imagine that: people are so afraid of the banking landscape in the UK – and the Government as well – that they would rather keep a few rolled-up hundred pound notes in their cupboards and wardrobes, simply because that to them would be the most safe option. When your nest egg is actually kept in a robin’s nest in your back garden, there’s a bloody problem!