BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Tizer]

It also shows up an increasing assumption by big companies that they can simply ignore what the regulators and government say, and the rules and laws of the land.

[Stanley]

Hardly any surprise when you look at the factors they have to consider before starting a scam. Will it make more money for us? How strong is the regulation system. What are the consequences if we get caught? How long can we get away with this? Conclusion must be that it's a win-win situation for them.
The answer is the US way, go for the instigators, impose meaningful personal fines and gaol them. Simples!!

[Stanley]

If you are feeling particularly masochistic read THIS Telegraph report about the effect of a Greek default on savings, pensions and the markets. One thing is certain, the banks will avoid the suffering by passing on the consequences to their clients. Or am I being too judgemental?

[Tizer]

Hot off the press in the last hour. More bank trouble...The BBC says "About 600,000 payments that failed to enter the accounts of RBS customers overnight may not be completed until the end of the week, the bank has said." Apparently it has since said that payments won't go through until Saturday. If it's RBS then it also means customers of NatWest, Coutts and Ulster Bank. Last time this happened to RBS (2012) it cost the bank (and thus indirectly it's customers) £56 million. LINK

[Stanley]

Did you see the Suit on TV saying that it was 'an isolated incident' and nobody would lose by it. Really? So not the same as the two earlier incidents? The general opinion amongst the brains is that the root problem is that the core data bases are a mess, cobbled together from different systems during takeovers and all dating from the 1970s. If they had spent the money the faults have cost them on building a new modern system it would have been cheaper. Are these people really fit to be running a tea shop, let alone one of the biggest banks in the world?

[Tizer]

Are these people really fit to be running a tea shop, let alone one of the biggest banks in the world?

Exactly. And the Financial Times this morning is describing this failure to maintain, update and develop `digital operations' as `City wide', not just RBS. Masters of the Universe, eh?

Later, on a more mundane topic. I wrote on one of the OG threads the other day about how we ditched Midland Bank in the 1990s, went to nationwide and have had good service ever since. I should have qualified that with the words "from our local Nationwide branch" as we run into trouble when we have to deal with NW's head office people in Swindon, such as with online aspects or things that they keep close to their chests. I was reminded today when Mrs Tiz had to ring and file a formal complaint. She went into the local branch recently and used her Power of Attorney to set up an ISA for her father and one for her mother. A bit long-winded and bureaucratic but that's not the branch staff's fault, it's the head office noddies justifying their existence. It all went OK, Mrs Tiz filled in the forms under their guidance and they were then sent off to head office for the ISA certificates to be made up and mailed to us - head office doesn't trust the branches with printing out the forms. The certificates arrived today and would you believe it, they are both made out in her father's name! So theoretically he has two ISAs - which is not allowed (they probably transport you to Australia for opening more than one ISA). The branch staff are surprised, they checked and everything on their system shows up as Mrs Tiz filled it out. Somebody at head office has garbled it!

[Stanley]

Commiserations. The brave new world of digitised management by people who are more interested in checking their Facebook status during working hours than keeping their minds on the job they are paid for.
My daughter Janet knows about these things having had supervision of rebuilding some of the most sensitive databases in the world. She said that her biggest task was getting the client to understand that they had to retrieve and store the data and then destroy the old system and hardware to make sure that all the bugs were eliminated. Then start with a completely new programme, hardware and protocols. This works and though it seems expensive, in the long run it is the only economic solution. (On the last one she did, when she transferred the data physically to the new system she did it personally and had a full police car and helicopter escort! The original database was than transferred from the new system to storage media and put in the safest place the organisation could find. Once the system had been tested the original copy was destroyed.)
Basically this is what the banks need to do because another fault of the old systems is that algorithms behave like a virus and the only way to clean them out and start anew is to physically destroy the system and it's hardware.

[Stanley]

Breaking news but not on the web yet. Jenkins, the CEO of Barclay's Bank has been sacked....

[Stanley]

You may remember me saying I might have been one of the people charged twice on my debit card transaction at the Co-operative on July 7th. I've just got my statement and I was right but give them their due, they had repaid it direct into my account the following day....

[Stanley]

Interesting piece of analysis in PE 'In The City' this week. They reckon that the recent management changes at Barclay's signal the end of the bank's self-abasement mode and a return to business as usual before the crash. Worth reading.....

[Stanley]

See THIS for a Guardian report on the 10% rise in profits for HSBC. Could it be that happy days are here again?

[Tizer]

They certainly are. Interest-only mortgages are back in favour.

[Stanley]

See THIS for a BBC report of the trial of the trader accused of running a network that rigged the LIBOR. 14 years sounds about right.... This may send a chill down the backs of other managers and traders, 11 more are under investigation. During the trial Tom Hayes said that the management knew what he was doing but turned a blind eye. I can believe this and it is borne out by what my daughter told me about her experience as a risk analyst with a large merchant bank. She said that when they red-flagged something like a new algorithm, all the management wanted to know was whether it would make money. This is the ethos that resulted in the 2008 credit crisis. Have we learned nothing? I say this because it looks as though regulatory pressure is being taken off the banks again.
Breaking news at 07:15 that Ossie has pulled the trigger and started selling RBS shares for less than we paid for them. (LINK) Mind you, with economic prospects how they are in the long term, this could be the right decision.

[Tizer]

Talking of `economic prospects in the long term', I hear the Government puffing itself up over the health of the UK economy...then I wonder how much of the economic recovery is a mirage and is really due to all the money being cycled back to consumers in the form of PPI compensation payments. RBS says that its PPI compensation payments may eventually amount to £12 billion (yes, billion, not million) and that's only one bank and only one type of mis-selling. It's a very large windfall for those receiving the payments and a big boost to their spending power in addition to all that potential pension money becoming available...but only a temporary boost.

[Pluggy]

Perhaps not the banks but bank related. I paid off a credit account with one of my suppliers a couple of weeks back. It hasn't been credited and my creditors accounts appear to be struggling finding it. I've paid it exactly the same way several times before without issue......

Maybe I'll go round there with a stack of pound notes the next time.

I really feel I missed out by not having taken out a loan in the last 25 years and been missold PPI. Pity it doesn't stop the parasitic 'ambulance followers' ringing me to tell me about how they can get it back.

[Stanley]

Pluggy, you didn't need to take out a loan to get a share in the bonanza. I had credit card insurance only and got a pay out.
Exactly Tiz. The 'economic miracle' is based on phantom money, fines and repayments by the banks, Quantitative Easing and rising personal debt. All of them will be clawed back one way or another. Strange that this government has an aversion to debt and searches for 'sound money' by encouraging just the opposite behaviour in the public. In the long run, this is not sound management of the country's wealth and it will fail.
The reason why I said that whilst I deplore the selling off of RBS shares (Paper loss £1billion on 5% of our stake) this may be a good time to start is that there is no guarantee that the share price will ever get back to the dizzy heights at which we bought them out and saved the banks. Look at the state of the global economy and the current problems in the EU.... We are living in dangerous times, there are no certainties. Events Dear Boy.
By the way, did you see that the current boss of RBS said the start of the sell-off was a good thing as it signalled a return to the 'normal' private ownership of the banking sector. Translation: It seems that happy days are here again.

[plaques]

Maybe I'll go round there with a stack of pound notes the next time.

The funny thing I was in the bank changing an old £10 note which had gone out of date. The young lady on the counter said " don't worry we still get people bringing old pound notes in". I immediately thought of Pluggy.

[Stanley]

See THIS for a report of the trouble another British bank has got itself into. Standard Chartered PLC has run foul of the US regulators as has its adviser Promontory.

[Tizer]

It's going to get confusing when we switch to plastic banknotes in place of paper...the phrase `paid with plastic' will become ambiguous.

Pluggy, did you pay off the credit by electronic transfer? If so, did you send it to the correct account details?

[Stanley]

It's only recently that I have learned about the legal process of Maxwellisation. (LINK) Named after Captain Bob, it is the process whereby anyone who is to be criticised in a court judgement or government enquiry is allowed to see the criticism and respond before publication. This is what is happening in the Chilcot Enquiry of course but I've posted here because it is even more common in the financial world as in the long delayed report on the HBOS collapse of 2008. Captain Bob left more than one legacy!

[Big Kev]

Pluggy, you didn't need to take out a loan to get a share in the bonanza. I had credit card insurance only and got a pay out.

Me too, downloaded some preprepared letter templates from moneysavingexpert. It was misold due to a pre-existing medical condition.

[Stanley]

Same here Kev and I didn't need any expensive assistance. The whole process took a while but went very smoothly. Pity the bank's normal services don't work as well!

[Tizer]

There was a shocking revelation in The Times on the weekend of how Barclays handles closed accounts. I've come to expect anything from banks but they still have the ability to surprise me. It was triggered by a letter from someone who had run his own small business and had its bank account with Barclays, but about 5 years ago he closed the account. Now one of his customers has tried to pay him several thousand pounds by bank transfer but used the old bank account details rather than the new ones. Barclays didn't bounce the payment or contact the business owner or customer. When the owner found out about the payment he contacted Barclays to ask for the money but they said (wait for it!) that his old bank account number is now the number of someone else's account. So there's now someone else who has an account with the same number and, being at the same branch, has the same sort code as his old business account. According to Barclays, "The new account holder cannot be contacted to give Barclays permission to take back the funds".

The Times contacted Barclays and they said it is now their normal policy to recycle account numbers, even in the same branch. They don't see any problem with doing it - even though this incident has come to light. The man has lost over £3000, or his customer has, depending on the situation between them. We might think the customer should have checked the details were up to date but these days bank details are lodged in company databases and stay there forever - if you've ever tried getting your details changed permanently on a company's database you'll know how hard it is. They get spread about on many databases and many PCs etc within a company. The important point is that a bank should never, ever, use the same account number again, there's no excuse for it and it's irresponsible - but typical of why I'm always ranting on about the incompetence of the large organisations that now provide our services and products.*

*Another example of such incompetence is WH Smith claiming there's no way that it can offer two different VAT rates on it's sales at airports and thus trying to justify the current scam where it charges the VAT inclusive price on items that should be zero rate or free of VAT.

[Stanley]

It says something about the modern view of banks that I doubt if that report will surprise anyone Tiz. A clear case of failure by the bank and a case for the Ombudsman? How can a policy like that ever be allowed? You've been reading my rantings long enough to know that my opinion is that one of the biggest problems we face nowadays in modern life is simple incompetence.... I rest my case.
I saw the report on mis-charging VAT in Duty Free shops.... It's always been a grey area and of course any opportunity to increase profit is ample justification for the firms concerned. What a wonderful world we have constructed.....

[Stanley]

See THIS for a gloomy report on the troubled Cooperative Bank. Not good news for anyone and symptomatic of the troubles lurking in the banking sector today.