What does it take to make us move our money?
There’s a widely quoted statistic that you’re more likely to get divorced than to move your bank account. In the general opinion, you’re relationship with your bank is pretty much for life — through thick and thin (mostly their thick and your thin). But given that this financial relationship is also one of the most important, isn’t it a good idea to choose someone who you’ll be comfortable with?
The past few weeks have brought a whole raft of reasons to feel insecure about your relationship with your bank into the public gaze. Whilst there are few of us without an anecdote of terrible customer service, or who don’t have the occasional rant against bankers and bonuses, recent events involving Natwest and Barclays have in some cases been the final straw. The Guardian’s poll ‘Will you be moving your money following recent events?’ found that over 70% said yes, they would.
Natwest customers got an unwelcome surprise on Tuesday morning when many of them found their accounts had not been updated with incoming or outgoing payments. There were stories of people trapped in carparks unable to use their cards to pay their parking bill, of those who’s cards were rejected in supermarkets, or who were unable to go through with house purchases.
Then, on Thursday, it emerged that Barclays bank had been fixing the inter-bank lending rate, allowing them to rake in profits at their customers’ expense. Barclays is first to be named and shamed in a list that is expected to grow longer as the regulators do their work.
And on Friday, the big banks were found guilty of, in the understated language of the FSA, ‘serious failings’ in the way they sold financial products to small businesses. In the language of one of the small businessmen affected: ‘they have torn the soul out of the business’.
So what does it take to make us move our money?
None of the events of the past two weeks should have come as a surprise. Over the last few years the big banks have proved again and again that they will consistently put personal profit over public benefit. That they do not care about customers enough to make sure they have the right products and services. And that they will reward themselves for irresponsible trading, fraud, tax avoidance and illegal mis-selling with bonuses that have grown exponentially over the past few years.
It seems that moving your money, like many administrative tasks, takes a strong incentive. Fury is a good one, and one that many report anecdotally as having given them the final push, especially in the wake of the financial crisis. One mover said “After 30-odd years of loyalty to NatWest, the antics of RBS Group — in particular their obsession with sell, sell, sell at the expense of customer service and reliable back-office operations (e.g. IT) have finally tipped me over the edge.”
Another said: ‘I switched months ago! I’m heartily sick to death of the lies, cheating and all other shades of corruption from banks’.
The biggest barrier to moving seems to be the lack of awareness of the alternatives. Move Your Money UK gets many questions via Twitter and other media to the effect of ‘where should I move my money to? Surely they’re all the same?’. If this were the case, we would be in an unfortunate position indeed. Thankfully, although the UK does not benefit from the wealth of financial options existing in countries like the US and Germany, there are alternatives to the big, and increasingly broken, banks. Credit unions, building societies, cooperatives and banks with explicit ethical policies offer the full range of conventional financial products — without the irresponsible and illegal trading practices, criminally-pushy mis-selling and craven bonus taking whilst the real economy starves of credit.
The best advocacy for these banks will be the ever-growing number of their customers. Move Your Money seeks to amplify individual voices to spread the message that we don’t have to live with a feral banking sector, we have the power to build a better one.
Originally published in June 2012 at moveyourmoney.org.uk
