Ruffler Bank savings

codetown

It seems to be quite a small outfit:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/133/133901.html

Probably they traded not a lot with consumers, and this would explain the low number of employees. Clearly it is a different type of organisation than ICICI and it all seems more traditional banking/certificates rather than online.
Their participation to the Financial Services Compensation scheme seems to give some confort up to 33k pounds.

melbury

Limes wrote:

On that basis though ICICI is mentioned as not subscribing to the Banking Code. Doesn't really seem to have done them any harm the number of mentions they get on MSE. . . Not everybody seems to have had a terrible time with ICICI. Is Ruffler likely to be any different? I'm intrigued as I've never heard of them and will be doing some digging about them as an organisation I think!

Please post on here if you find any information, would be appreciated.

Thanks.

jasonc_2

Just seen this post and thought I'd let you know my experiences with this institution.

I invested some money with them about six months ago. Sent my application form and cheque through the post but heard nothing from them for 10 days.
Rang them up and they said they hadn't recieved my application.
Got really worried, cancelled the cheque and then two days later rang me back and told me they had recieved it. They were very apologetic so I sent them another cheque and all seemed fine until I recieved my quarterly statement which showed that my initial investment was £5000 less than what I'd actually invested!

When I rang them they were insistant that this was the amount they received.
I was seriously angry by now so I had to send them my bank statement as proof.

They did accept that I was right but I don't think I will be bothering with them again.

free4440273

jasonc wrote:

Just seen this post and thought I'd let you know my experiences with this institution.

I invested some money with them about six months ago. Sent my application form and cheque through the post but heard nothing from them for 10 days.
Rang them up and they said they hadn't recieved my application.
Got really worried, cancelled the cheque and then two days later rang me back and told me they had recieved it. They were very apologetic so I sent them another cheque and all seemed fine until I recieved my quarterly statement which showed that my initial investment was £5000 less than what I'd actually invested!

When I rang them they were insistant that this was the amount they received.
I was seriously angry by now so I had to send them my bank statement as proof.

They did accept that I was right but I don't think I will be bothering with them again.

wow, that sounds like serious incompetence.

mroller

jasonc wrote:

...until I recieved my quarterly statement which showed that my initial investment was £5000 less than what I'd actually invested!

...

this is really shocking. They could not even check their own statments, you had to send in your own.
At best it's incompetence, at worst sleaze, relying on people forgetting how much they deposited with them.

I think I will stay clear of them for now.

free4440273

mroller wrote:

I think I will stay clear of them for now.

you and me both

Greycrow

free4440273 wrote:

you and me both

And me too, at least until I hear something to the contrary.

MarkyMarkD

Those rates are unfeasibly high, so I would tend to be concerned.

Limes

melbury wrote:

Please post on here if you find any information, would be appreciated.

Thanks.

As codetown mentions, not a large outfit.

You can take a look at their latest annual accounts here: http://www.rufflerbank.co.uk/downloads/

Total income for year to 31st March 2006 was registered as £5.8m when comparing this to other banking organisations this is miniscule - HSBC for example had a turnover in 2005 of around £44,789m and LTSB had about £10,540m.

Their total customer deposits book was only worth £34.2m in 2006 which was up 33% on 2005's £25.7m (just for some context, HBoS - the largest holder of retail deposits in the UK - had a savings book worth around £123 billion back in 2004) - Ruffler attribute their success to high interest rates and excellent customer service, but. . .

Ruffler only employs around 20 people, so in no way could deal with the volume of demand that any active advertising would create, hence they only work on a word of mouth recommendation/repeat business basis. It is unlikely that customer service would be exceptional if there was a mass marketing campaign as there just isn't any human resource to make the experience particularly efficient or satisfying and probably one of the reasons that they only provide fixed rate/term products with a high minimum investment is that it looks as though they may be targeting a very specific group of consumers.

The chairman who has been there from the establishment of the bank in 1969 owns a 67% majority of the shares.

Xbigman

But where do they make their money from? I've never seen them offer loans or anything.
Regards



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