There are few currently doing business in the UK now that would argue that trust in the even the best business bank accounts has been eroding; in fact, even the head of UK bank Co-op said that many customers are so reticent to trust traditional banking providers due to lacking trust in them, more traditional banking options are being widely shunned.
Chief executive for Co-op Peter Marks, after his bank released their latest profits and performance figures in a first half earnings report, recently commented that due to the sometimes unethical behaviour of of many banking institutions, they are now facing a very steep uphill climb since the beginnings of the global credit crunch.
Co-op’s profits before taxes for the first half of 2010 were tallied at £260 million, up 17 per cent from previous. The incidences of new current accounts being opened rose by 30 per cent, and the amount of finance secured by small businesses rose nearly 70 per cent to £1 billion, up from £600 million.
While both Co-op’s current account and business loan figures were up, the level of confidence the average Briton has in the UK banking industry have been in free fall since since the credit disaster began with Northern Rock two years ago. Since that time, there have been myriad reports released that detailed such events as runaway pay bonuses to bank staff, breaches in private, supposedly secure customer information, and a decided lack of available loan opportunities, all things that have further eroded what little confidence most UK consumers have in their financial services providers.
There were points during the global economic crisis that a sizable percentage of customers were so worried that they refused to even put their cash into their savings accounts, instead hoarding their money in their homes or seeking out any sort of alternative to the traditional bank offerings that seemed anything but safe at the time.
One financial industry insider commented recently that there are quite a few banks out there that fully deserve the poor levels of customer confidence, since there are many financial institutions that were operating in an unethical manner, and it only makes matters worse when the only news customers see on any given day is yet another report detailing the exorbitant bonus being paid out to some chief executive whilst cutting the interest rates on their savings accounts down to nearly nothing.