OneGuyFromBarlick

Stanley wrote:I remember that my Dad's bank statements were printed in black for credit and red for overdrawn, still like that in 1950s when I was with Lloyds Bank. But my dad also got his cancelled checks back after they'd been paid out. When I was working for Rochdale Welding we did a boiler repair at a storage facility in Cheshire. It was where the banks stored all the old paperwork and cancelled cheques after they had been cleared. I wonder if they still do it?

Iron mountain seems to be the preferred storage system. Many old cheques still held on bank premises for the 7 year rule. Most companies with room to store will retain cheques returned from their bankers. As for red for overdrawn they have a far better system now computer generated nasty letters,designed to belittle you.
Today i'm feeling a little miffed with the Co-op bank they charged me twelve pounds for going over my £250 limit on my credit card. The whole point of this limit was that it couldnt be overdrawn,this card was for internet purchases,then if it was to be abused by a scammer my total loss could not exceed the set limit. The reason it was overdrawn, they took 10 working days to clear my last months settlement cheque. Could I get satisfaction from complaints, well no it seems it was my fault.

If all the data and records are supposed to be stored on paper I wonder how they handle passwords, usernames, security phrases etc for the new `mobile banking' system?

By the way, if you make an online bank transfer to another person's or business's account be very careful. An investigation on a reader's behalf by The Times found that her bank (Barclay's) uses only the recipient's account number in an online transfer and ignores the recipient's name and any other details given. If you get one digit wrong in the recipient's account number (as the reader did because she was using a mobile device with tiny buttons) then the money will go to the wrong account. In this case it went to the right bank (Co-Op) but the wrong person's account at that bank. Barclays were at first reluctant to help, then tried to get the money returned but Co-Op said the holder of the `wrong' account was refusing to allow them to shift the money back to the reader. It looks like she has lost her money. If you're feeling smug because, like me, you don't bank with Barclays - hard luck, all the banks that The Times contacted use the same system of account number only. When asked why they said because it would be expensive to have to use other data too. The term `not fit for purpose comes to mind'.

The banks used to use a mathematical trick called Modulus 11 to guard against this. All 8-digit account numbers were subject to the multiplication of the first digit by 8; added to the second multiplied by 7, and so on to the last by 1. Add these and the resultant number is always divisible by 11 and this check made it almost impossible for any number to be input incorrectly as if it were, then you would not be able to divide by 11.

Some banks still use this, but it is not industry standard now apparently. My thanks to The Guardian for this as they too have reported on a bank customer who found her debit to another of her accounts going to another account holder following an error inputting the account number.

Richard Broughton

You lost me there Richard but a very impressive LKF (Little Known Fact)!

Thanks for that Bruff, I thought there should be some maths way of doing it better but didn't know what it was. It beats me why they can't at least add in the customer surname as a double check - that should virtually eliminate this problem. But they say it's too expensive. I can't see how it can be expensive when they should have all the data on a database already.

Bit of a flap on in the banks this morning as the BofE is proposing charging the banks for the privilege of holding stocks of money intended to boost lending to business. Sounds mad to me. They say that it will not affect ordinary savers but knowing the banks they will try to maintain there profits from somewhere. Guess who will be spot ball!

It's a bit more subtle than that - the banks would be charged not a one-off fee when given the money but on an interest rate basis. If they lend out the money quickly then it would cost them little or nothing but if they hold on to it (which is causing the current stagnation of lending) then they would incur interest charges. Nevertheless it all makes you wonder why we bother having private high street banks, they could just be branches of the BofE and that institution could lend out the money direct!

Stanley wrote:Bit of a flap on in the banks this morning as the BofE is proposing charging the banks for the privilege of holding stocks of money intended to boost lending to business. Sounds mad to me. They say that it will not affect ordinary savers but knowing the banks they will try to maintain there profits from somewhere. Guess who will be spot ball!

Think I read the same thing the Dep Gov has a new scheme where you charge neg interest. As you say we will pay, probably a charge for your account and no interest payable on savings. Nuts.

Tiz, how true. We used to call it nationalisation. The big laugh is that nobody can prove that these high level financial shenanigans are having any effect. All we have seen so far is a flat-lining economy and as you found out, degradation of savings in pension funds. Brilliant management...... Is it any wonder that the protest party in Italy won 20% of the vote. I wonder what we'll see in Eastleigh today.....

Ouchie! RBS put aside another £5 billion to cover their bad debt loans (revising downwards their exposure as the IMF has called for).

Of course Mr Cable will come out and tell us that these losses were all in the casino banks. Maybe he can ignore the evidence.

...and they're paying out £600,000,000 in bonuses to their employees - and that's after deducting millions from bonuses (so they claim) to pay for the Libor scandal etc. Bonuses for fraud and rubbish customer service, whatever next!

Hear the bloke on #WATO at lunch time? Denouncing the politician's stance on the casino banking and where the blame actually lays

Until they face up to where it went wrong, how can they hope to try to fix it?

Tizer wrote:...and they're paying out £600,000,000 in bonuses to their employees - and that's after deducting millions from bonuses (so they claim) to pay for the Libor scandal etc. Bonuses for fraud and rubbish customer service, whatever next!

Become a banker, if there is only 600 employees out of the 141,000 who work for RBS who get above £1million (many will be on the boards and these are controlled by shareholders), are you right to be so forthright about 'bankers'. Even with the bonus the investment arm made almost £2billion profit on a turnover of £ trillions (less than 1% profit)

Big numbers confuse, much easier to allocate and look at the detail

A very robust defence of the banking industry portrayed on #WATO today, some very inconvenient truths for the politicians who were there to discuss #PMQ's, grapsing at the straws proffered by Martha Karney. With those people in charge it is unlikely that the solutions will be provided that will deliver a safe banking system.

Merve the Swerve telling the select committee about the break up of RBS: is possibly a little late, as RBS has already sold off quite a bit of it's hugely profitable businesses. They were told it would be a zombie bank, when they intervened, and the cost would have been less to the tax payer if it had just 'gone bust' in the first place

Glad to see that action is being taken on the High Street lenders charging enormous interest rates to the poorest people with the worst credit ratings. I hope it's swift and effective.
Watched part of the programme on poverty in America and the effects on the children. Remembered George Bernard Shaw making a speech to the Fabians once that started, "I hate poor people, I want to abolish them" Not as draconian as it sounded, his theme was the abolition of poverty. So, the question is still there, what does a worthy case down on his or her luck do? No, I don't know the answer but my main reason for hating the usurers is that they are making money out of sheer desperation. So sad....
News this morning that RBS Group computers went down at 21:00 last night shutting millions of customers out of online banking.
Vince Cable comes out supporting borrowing money to finance construction projects. Makes sense when you look at how cheap money is at the moment. Problem is of course that dogma says that all 'unnecessary' borrowing should be avoided. Question is, what is necessary and sensible? Stimulating the economy will get more people back in employment and reduce the drain on the benefit account.
Mervyn King has a point about RBS Group. It is a nonsense to hold the majority of the equity and be running the bank at arm's length. Much more sensible to fully nationalise it, take full control and bite the bullet of losses now by cleaning out the bad investments. His point is that we are going to lose anyway so we might as well do it now and end up with a healthy institution that can function properly as a bank. It could also be a vehicle for direct government involvement in lending to the sections of the economy which are starved of cash at the moment. The main benefit of this would be that if large capital holders like the pension funds saw the government actually committing, hand on, to getting say housing construction going again they would be encouraged to invest their funds in the same areas. The word from the City is that the pension funds are desperate for genuine opportunities to invest the billions that are at the moment locked up because there is too much uncertainty in the system.
Speeches about 'steady as she goes' aren't cutting it and the longer proper investment in sensible economic policies is postponed, the longer the economy will flat-line and the danger in that is that capital investments in existing plant and human skills are degrading all the time and the cost of starting full production again with proper investment will rise. In other words, the hole is getting deeper even when the economy is standing still.

News that James Crosby is to renounce his knighthood and take a cut of 33% in his pension. This is the wrong way for this problem to be tackled. It should not be voluntary but mandatory. The only thing that will pull the Lords of the Universe up is the application of harsh sanctions.

Report this morning that MPs are protesting against experts from the Big Four accountancy schemes being co-opted to the Treasury to advise on new tax law and in the process manufacturing loopholes that can be exploited by them to allow their clients to avoid paying tax. About time this was stopped!

Justin Welby is a member of the government's committee on banking and has suggested that senior bankers should be examined on their qualifications before being allowed to take post. Sounds like a no-brainer to me!

As well as dropping out of the Lloyds TSB deal, the Co-op says it might drop banking altogether. They say banking is getting too difficult and expensive with the need for greater capital funds etc. Perhaps if they didn't scam their customers they wouldn't have to pay so much compensation and then banking wouldn't be so difficult or so expensive. Even the Co-op has had to pay compensation.

I heard an interview with the CEO Tiz and he said that the rumour they were thinking of getting out of banking was wrong. They are going to concentrate on making their service better.

I note that the exchange rate of the Pound against the Dollar is now $1.85, it has been around $1.60 for years. Sneaky devaluation by the US?

Lloyd’s Bank publishes healthy results this morning with no more provision for mis-selling PPI. It looks as though they have bottomed that one after setting aside I think it's £7 billion.

Tripps tells me I may have misheard the price of the dollar the other day. He's right, it's $1.56 today. Sorry about that......

The word is that in his search for ready money, Ossie is considering an early sale of some of the banking assets they gained at the bail-out. Selling at a loss? Do we get a say?

Very refreshing for someone on here to say they were wrong, and I gave him the opportunity just to quietly delete it too.